Today's Accomplishment

R worked very hard this morning at getting into our large stainless steel bowl.

We usually use it to store her toy pots and pans in the kitchen, but occasionally she plays with the big bowl itself. After quite a few missteps and several yells of frustration, she figured out how to position herself so that she could successfully sit in the bowl. Then she entertained herself by grabbing all the cloth wipes she could grab and stuffing them in the bowl with her.

We have so much fun in the mornings before breakfast!

Sleep Experiment: Morning 1

Today I heard R moving around about 4:45 but left her alone until a little after 5:00 I heard her through the monitor saying hi. hi. hiee. hhi. hi. as if she was talking to someone in her room. So I popped in there. But the good news is, she waited until 5:00 to wake up. In my last post, CraftyQueen suggested it might take a few mornings to get her to sleep later. Let's hope! I'm aiming for a 5:30-6:00 wake up-- I think that would make it a bit more rushed to get her to eat and get ready for day care, but definitely doable.

A Sleep Experiment

Tonight J and I talked about adjusting R's schedule to try and get her down to sleep a little later, so that maybe she will stop waking up at 4:30-5:00. So tonight we let her run around in her bedroom until close to 7, when we finally laid her down. (She's normally in bed a little bit after 6). We'll see how the experiment worked tomorrow morning. I'll keep you updated.

It's a game!

You may have noticed that R doesn't wear a lot of hair clips. This is not because we don't have hair clips for her to wear. On the contrary, we've collected a whole mess of the cutest hair bows ever. My mom's awesome friend, Mrs. H., has made dozens of hair clips and sent them to R. We have them in all different colors and patterns, and I love the way they look on R!

So why don't we put them on her more often?

Witness the photographic evidence below:
It might surprise you to hear that she lets me put the bows on just fine. In taking that series of photos, I must have put that bow in her hair no less than five or six different times.

In fact, what you see in that last picture is her trying to hand me the bow so I can put it in her hair again, just for her to pull it out, again! She thinks it's a game, and it's totally fun! It's the game of, "Mama, put a hair bow in my hair so I can pull it out and hand it back to you!" It's also the game of, "Let's see if I can get this bow out before Mom can get pictures of me with a bow in my hair, other than ones like this one":Note, in particular, the rumpled sweater that I haven't bothered to try to straighten, in my haste to set her down and possibly get a photo before that hair bow is gone once again.

You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the girl

As I mentioned in my last post, R has really been into wearing socks. She's also been really into wearing her cowboy boots. She picks them up from the shelf, walks over to you, proceeds to hand them over, and lifts up her foot.

She has so much fun clomping all around the house with them on-- making lots of noise on our hardwood floors.

When she does it, it really looks like she's trying to join a hoe-down, and is ready to line-dance with the best of them.

Socks

Guess what? R loves socks. She will find socks while you're folding laundry and ask you to put them on her. She finds my socks and J's socks and will ask us to put them on her, even though they're way too big. I usually put them on her hands instead of her feet to avoid tripping. Oh man, she loves it. And if you dare to pull those socks off of her, or take them away, does she get mad.

When we pull out her socks to put them on in the morning, she starts lifting up her feet in anticipation.

The other day she was hanging out at home with J, and she really wanted to wear more than one pair of socks at the same time. J was happy to oblige, giving her the layered sock look that went out in the 1980s, as well as some thumbless mittens.Last month, she got some Dora the Explorer socks from Auntie T (thanks!!) and this morning when I put them on her she said hi to Dora. So cute.

15 Months

Dear R,

(With apologies for being late...) Your fifteenth month started off chaotically but stretched into your first extended period of stability since mid-July. With a cross-country move, two visits to Grammie and Grampie's, starting day care, and a brand-new house that seems to change every day as we continue to unpack boxes, there's been a lot going on. But you've responded tremendously!

After the first few changes, you handled it all like a champ. But then things started to go a little wacky. When you started day care, you were pretty upset. It took you about a week and a half to completely settle down at the center, and now you're excited to go there every morning. Almost too excited, if you ask me!

We've watched you grow by leaps and bounds this month. You seem to be taller, although we don't have any measurements to prove this, and you're really starting imaginative play with your toys. Your dolls are your favorite-- you love to pick them up, hug them, wipe their noses, feed them water from your sippy cup, and give them pieces of your own (real) food. You also love to cook with Daddy in the kitchen. It's the cutest thing ever. You open all the kitchen cabinets, pull out pots and pans, and bang away at them. We have some bowls and soft food just for you to use and you love to cook strange combinations of foods for us.

In addition to the fun playful side, however, your temper-tantrumy side is coming out too. You get upset if we take something you can't have away from you, or prevent you from going somewhere you shouldn't. If you can't figure something out quickly enough, you scream for help or get very angry. We can already tell you have Mom's temperament, rather than Dad's. That's too bad. Mama doesn't have an inch of patience for things that exasperate her, while Daddy's patience is practically endless.

You're still learning signs, but you're also babbling and pronouncing more and more words yourself. You've discovered "Bye Bye!" this month and love to say it whenever one of us (usually Daddy) walks out of the room. You still don't say it on cue to strangers because you're so focused on staring at them and figuring out what they're doing, but it is so cute to hear you, once they've disappeared, shoot out with a "bye bye!" You also say it every time Daddy closes his computer, because that's what we use to web-cam with the family, and you say it whenever Daddy finishes talking on the phone and says goodbye.

And that's how I'll end this letter. "Bye Bye!"

Love,
Mama

Weekend Update

R seems to be 90% better from her cold/respiratory infection. This is indeed cause for celebration. She slept a lot today, and had her fair share of crankiness, but her nose is not running and she has not had a fever since Thursday evening.

We've had a busy weekend, with a picnic on Saturday and running around town getting some shopping done today.

The funny thing is, though, that we've been getting up so early that when we left to go to the store, we were sure everything would already be open. In fact, though, it was only 9:00-- and nothing on Sunday is open at 9, really. It just felt later than that because we'd been up since 4:30 with R (well, actually, J let me go back to sleep until about 6:30) and it just seemed like it was late morning.

So we drove out to the mall where the Carter's store was (I wanted to get some long-sleeved onesies and some warm sleepwear for R, now that the nights are getting chillier) and it was only 9:30 and the store didn't open until 11! Because we were half an hour from home, we didn't want to waste the entire trip so we just killed some time by going to Office Depot when they opened at 10 to get a few things I needed for work and then browsing the grocery store that was right next to Carter's.

This Bites.

We kept R home from day care today because she was cranky as all get-out and we thought she would maybe recover better at home. I had her in the morning while J was at work and then he took over just before lunch.

Despite the fact that she took a good nap today, she's been soooooo cranky this evening, and right now is screaming in her crib. She doesn't want to calm down-- she doesn't want me to hold her, she doesn't want me to put her down, she doesn't want to run around, she doesn't want to do anything. I just hope she goes to sleep soon, poor baby, she's so tired.

UPDATE, Saturday Morning: I got her up and let her run around for about a half an hour and then tried to put her back down to sleep and she finally went to bed around 6:40 p.m. She seems to be much better today-- more chipper, at least!

Doctor's Appointment

Yesterday Rosemary had her first doctor's appointment for actual sickness, not just a check up. He diagnosed her with an upper respiratory infection and prescribed some antibiotics. No ear infection and she's doing well. She's just crankier, and she wants to be held all the time. Here's hoping she gets better really soon. It'll be nice to be able to have her running around instead of crying to be picked up whenever she's on the floor. Poor J had to make pizza dough and put together calzones while holding her the entire time. Trying to roll out pizza dough one-armed is kind of hard, he said!

Why? Why?

R used to get up at 6. Since school has started she's been getting up at 5. Or close to it. Sometimes it's before 5, even-- one morning this week it was about 10 til 5 when I had to go up and get her.

Her getting up that early makes it not so much the case that I get "work" done before getting her up. Mostly, I'm able to finish putting together her lunch and make myself some coffee and put away all the dishes that are drying on the counter and pick up some things and maybe run a load of laundry and assemble my school things and sometimes check my email.

The nice thing though is that it does make it the case that I drop her off at day care close to 7 and am off to work often before 8, sometimes around 7:30, even.

Yesterday I tried getting up at 3:30 to see if that helped me with having some more time where I could write instead of just putz around in the kitchen. It did!

But geez, getting up at 3:30? To make that work I have to go to bed around 8, and that feels kind of crazy. But if it works and I get writing done... I'm going to keep doing it. Of course, this morning didn't work out that way since my computer is a bit out of whack and our tech guy is looking at it, so I'm using J's computer to post this blog entry while I drink some coffee.

Whoop, there she goes. 4:59, right on the dot. Gotta go!

Fever

Our little baby had a rough evening today. I got home a little bit before 5 p.m. today and found J sitting on the couch holding a hysterical and obviously incredibly tired baby. I took her from him right away and got R down to sleep while nursing her. She hadn't had any dinner because she'd refused everything J had offered. While I was nursing her, J took her temperature and she had a mild fever, 100.9. We gave her some tylenol and laid her down to sleep, and we'll keep close tabs on her over the next day or so. She's been sleeping since 5:30. It's 8:30 now, and there hasn't been hardly a peep from her, so here's hoping she gets a good night's sleep. Now I'm off to bed myself!

Two stories

"Bittersweet"
When I dropped R off at day care, she hung out with me while I put her lunch in the fridge and tucked her things into her little cubby. Then, I walked her out to the main area, where the teacher who gets in earliest is always hanging out and getting things set up. Once R saw the teacher, she let go of my hand and walked up to the teacher with her arms outstretched to be picked up.

"Cooking Crackers"
J reported that when he was busy getting food ready for R earlier, she saw the crackers and began signing cracker, cracker. When he gave her a cracker, though, instead of eating it, she put it in one of her little pots, covered the pot, and walked into the living room, where she proceeded to "cook" the cracker a couple of different ways.

Posting Frenzy

Ok, I went on a posting frenzy. I've had all these things I've wanted to blog for a few days and just not had the time. I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures and videos and threw everything I had up on the blog. So if you're just checking this out, there are about five or six other new posts. Scroll on down!

Why Buy Toys?

R's favorite toy today was an empty tissue box.

R's Sign Language Dictionary: "Cracker"

She usually says "Ca Ca Ca" when she does this sign but didn't do it for this video. She often walks around signing this when she's in the kitchen, and especially if she spots the big tub of Trader Joe's Organic Animal Crackers that we feed her for snacks sometimes. She also loves to just randomly say it even when it's decidedly not snack time nor are there crackers in plain view.

Cilantro

Grammie potted these herbs that Grandma actually gave me several years ago--I loved the kit but my kitchen in Texas was a little inhospitable to me cultivating plants. My new kitchen here has an awesome wide windowsill that looks out onto the backyard. I love it!

Because the seeds were 2 years old, we weren't sure anything would grow. But look! There are two little cilantro sprouts coming out!

Brushing Hair (and some Androgyny)

Ok, so, I've posted before about how we did not find out ahead of time whether we were having a boy or a girl. This resulted in us getting a lot of gender-neutral stuff, including gender-neutral clothes. We also got a bunch of clothes that, at the time, I thought were borderline gender-neutral. Turns out they're really not.

In this video, you see R having a grand time brushing her doll's hair. She will do this if you say to her, "R, go brush your doll's hair!" She seeks out the brush, the doll, and proceeds to brush the doll's hair by generally hitting the doll in the head with the brush. (This is also how she brushes my hair. Yes, we're working on it!)

Anyway, in this video you also see her wearing a t-shirt that I initially deemed to be gender-neutral out of the piles of clothes my aunt sent us before she was born, and thus I kept it even after we found out she was a girl. When J put her in it the other day, I realized that it's really not so much gender-neutral.

Wearing it makes R look incredibly boyish. I think this speaks to the general androgyny of little kids, and also to one of the dangers of gender-neutral clothes. Technically, girls wear lots of red too. But girl shirts have to have some kind of froo-froo addition: a gathered sleeve or some lacy bits on the collar or a ruffle somewhere or a bow on the end of the sleeve or on the center of the neckline or something.

Back to School

It's starting to feel like fall. It's still pretty warm and muggy in the middle of the day, but the mornings have been crisp and cool. Some individual leaves have started to fall and it really won't be long before everything is red and yellow and orange and brown. I can't wait. After three years of everything's-green-until-it's-brown falls in Texas, I'm ready for what I consider to be "real" fall weather.

And of course, fall is back-to-school time. While R technically went back to school a couple of weeks ago, she got some new back-to-school clothes from Grandma and Aunt M just last week. And they are perfect! I love them!

Here are a few photos I got of her wearing two of her new back-to-school skirts. My favorite is the plaid one-- so so so awesome.

Community Day

Today was Community Day in our city. J found this out entirely by accident when he took R out for an early-morning walk and passed by people from our day care setting up a booth, which included a picture of R on a poster! She's a poster-child!

The event didn't officially start until 11 so we waited until after R had had lunch before heading out, and it was totally awesome. Apparently, because our sleepy little hamlet is fairly quiet in the summers until the students come back in the fall, this is a huge festival to welcome the students back and say "hello, community!" There were tons of booths. It was jam-packed! Lots of games and activities for kids, booths with hand-made arts and crafts, mini-store booths, booths from businesses in town, including several day care centers we learned more about, etc. I signed us up for a few things and entered a few raffles. There were also a slew of performances--from local martial arts groups, bands, children's theater, individual singers, etc.

We picked up some take-out from our favorite restaurant and headed home after spending nearly 2.5 hours at this thing just walking among the booths.

So What's Cooking?

R hangs out in the kitchen with J and I a lot. We're in there for what feels like several hours every day--cooking food, making R's breakfasts or lunches or snacks, washing dishes, doing laundry--and we've got quite a few drawers and bins she likes to get into and mess around with.

She has a bunch of soft food and a picnic basket as well as some metal pots and pans of her own and lately she's been having a blast cooking up a storm while she hangs out with us in the kitchen. If I get any good pictures or video of this I'll add them here.

The other thing she's been doing is lavishing a lot of attention on her little baby doll, and she loves to wipe the doll's nose (something we've been doing to her a lot as she seems to have a constant runny nose since starting day care) and giving the doll drinks of water from her sippy cup. In the video below, she changes the doll's diaper and then wipes her nose, unfortunately without washing her hands or changing the cloth first. (I assure you that this is not how J and I do things!)

OMG the cuteness!

So today when we picked R up from day care, the day care director could not stop gushing about how cute R was today. First, she did not cry--for the second day in a row--and in fact, was so happy to be at day care that she went up to every single child and said "Hi!" (and, I'm sure, sometimes, "hiHI.Hi. hi") along with a little wave.

The second thing is that there was a fire drill, because the building was testing the fire alarms, and while most of the kids were trying to plug their ears from the sound, since the alarms went off a couple of times even after the actual fire drill, R and another girl in her classroom were in hysterics. They could not stop laughing, according to the director. She said it was the funniest thing, to watch them laughing and laughing and laughing at this sound.

No More Tears

For the first time, R did not scream, turn bright red, or burst into tears at the prospect of me putting her down and leaving her at day care. It's a much nicer way to start the day when my last memory of her isn't of her screaming as I walk out.

Mornings are better...

I'm still getting up between 4 and 5 a.m., but I'm also getting to bed a lot sooner. This is a Very Good Thing. I'm actually really enjoying the mornings, when I focus on my own work for an hour or so. Then I get Rosemary when she wakes up, get her breakfast and all, and try to head out to day care by 7:15. If I leave before 7:15, I get to work before 8 a.m. which is excellent, and I work pretty much 8-4:30 and head home around 4:30 for dinner.

The routine just seems to be coming into place. It's only been a few days that it's been "working" so keep your fingers crossed that it continues to do so.

J's been a little worn out though. R was little miss crankypants for much of the afternoon, he said. I witnessed it after I got home. She was just hard to keep entertained and seemed to want stuff that we couldn't figure out. But she went right to sleep at her usual bedtime.

It's so cute--lately at bedtime, she kind of twists and turns for the crib while I'm holding her, as if to say, "put me down in there already so I can go to sleep!" Also cute is the way she loves to say goodnight to J. After her bath we go downstairs to say night night. She blows kisses as soon as I start saying "night night" and then J will ask for a kiss and she gives him really sweet hugs and kisses... and then she'll pull away real fast and wave while saying "byebyebyebyebyebyebyeBYEbye."

She's so cute!

Crackers

R walks around signing "cracker" if she hears you say anything with the "cra" opening. In recent days, this has included me saying, "you better get crackin'" and J saying "I was cleaning all the crap out of her high chair."

Visit from JW, C, and Little Frog

JW, C, and Little Frog stopped by our house today on their way to the shore.

R really took a shine to JW. She kept asking him to pick her up.Isn't Little Frog just adorable? I love taking her picture-- she has hundreds of different expressions and they are all so incredibly cute!!And among the many interesting things we learned today, we learned that Little Frog is very, very ticklish on her back!

I See Paris, I See France...

I see Mommy's underpants...

ON MY HEAD!

And around my neck!Today when J was folding laundry, R was walking around grabbing my underwear out of the basket and putting them over her head. That bunch of cloth around her neck is actually eight--yes, we counted when I was taking them off of her--eight pairs of my (clean!) underwear.

I won!

I'm so excited! Remember way back when I mentioned liking this website --Penny Pickles Art? She paints little canvas squares with initials inside each square. They are so so so cute.

Well.

The woman who runs the site, Annie (she's also the one who does all the paintings) posted a contest on her blog. The contest was to suggest a new theme for her to put up on her site, and if your theme was chosen, she would send you the canvas she painted, with your choice of an initial on it.

I suggested five different themes, and she picked one of them!!!!

I am so excited! The theme is a girl one, night fairies and imps, so we are getting it for R. It will be totally awesome.

Flying

My brother, A, just sent some pictures of his plane. They were pretty sweet so I asked if I could put a few on here. The pic above is the plane he flies (although I'm not sure if he is flying the one in the picture) and the two below are of the plane A flies (the B-52, on the bottom) and the plane that one of my other brothers, Local Hero, flies (the refueler on top, a KC-135).

It's official: Six.

It's official. I've seen--and felt--these suckers. She has six teeth. Granted, two of them are barely visible. But soon she'll have a mouth filled with six teeth. All the better for grinding her food with.

She's been waking up at night the last few nights, making us wonder if she's working on some other teeth as well.

In daycare news, she fingerpainted today. Apparently she liked doing it with her feet a lot better than doing it with her hands.

Morning craziness

For the last few days I've had so much to do I've been getting up at 4:30 just to get stuff done before R gets up. Whew, I'll tell you, this morning schedule is doing a job on me.

I drop R off at day care every day and J picks her up, so I'm trying to get the hang of getting R up and getting all the day care stuff pulled together. Her bag is usually fairly well assembled, but I need to fill her water and milk sippys, finish up her lunch (we don't usually cut up fruit the night before, preferring to do it in the morning, so even if other stuff is put in, I usually need to add something to it), get R fed and changed into daycare clothes, while making some coffee, eating some breakfast, and making sure I have all the stuff I'm taking in to work that day all ready.

It feels like chaos. I know, somehow, the secret is to get more organized and have everything go like clockwork, like a routine. But I'm not a good thinker-aheader. I'm a better "I've-done-this-before-and-made-this-mistake-already-so-I'm-not-going-to-make-it-again" kind of person. So I think there will invariably be some rough spots while I try to figure out the ropes.

Today, I barely made it out the door by 7:30 (R got up around 6:30) and arrived at work by 8:10. Daycare is a 15 minute walk to and 15 mins back, plus another 5-7 to work. But I only made it as early as I did because J got up and helped feed R while he was eating his breakfast.

I think it'll get easier. Right?

Only four teeth...

Ok, so some of you may remember that awhile back, I made a post titled "Four teeth?" In that post, I talked about how R seemed to be cutting four teeth simultaneously. [Edited to add: I also give an update on those teeth in this post. (And, if you've been paying especially close attention, you've noticed you can click on any of the labels at the bottom of a post and find all the other posts that share that label.)]

Fast forward almost 2 months, and only 2 of those four teeth have actually materialized. Nevertheless, my blog post title was apt, in that she now has a total of four teeth-- two on top and two on bottom.

Yesterday, a fifth tooth cut through, one of her eye teeth on bottom. And, I swear to all that is holy (I'm being so emphatic because I've been thinking this tooth was going to pop through for two solid months now!) that her top left central incisor is just about all the way through.

So, in a day or two, she may have six teeth. Seems like not very many given that she's 14.5 months old, but everything I've read suggests that babies get their teeth at different rates, so this is probably perfectly normal.

Stuff for daycare

So I know I've been posting a lot about day care lately. It's kind of the thing we've been doing for the past week (in addition to work, preparations, etc.)

Anyway, I was thinking about the stuff we've had to get or start using since R started daycare and thought I would pull it all together in a post to share with others whose children are in daycare and maybe get other ideas.

Nap Pad. As I posted below, we've bought a nap pad for R, that she probably won't use until next year, when she moves into the 2-year-old room.

Lunchbox. We pack her lunch every day, so we need something to put it in. She doesn't have lunch at daycare every day (depends on how hungry she is before she leaves at noon) but we figure, better safe than sorry and provide the food anyway. If she doesn't eat it there, she eats it when she gets home. We use this laptop lunchbox for her lunch. (We got the idea from this Vegan Lunchbox blog, where this incredibly creative mom made these awesome, healthy, and artistic lunches for her son every day. You can check out some of the meals in her blog archives.) J actually bought me the lunchbox a couple years ago for Christmas, but it works great for R's lunches because of the compartments and handy carrying case.

Embroidered lovey and blanket. R has a little giraffe that she sleeps with that JW and C gave her last Christmas, and we've sent it to daycare for her naps. The best thing about it is that they had her name embroidered on it, which totally makes it clear that it's her giraffe. In a similar vein, we also have a blanket that R was given when she was born that had her name embroidered on it-- awesome gift, because again, the blanket can go to day care and it's obvious it's hers.

While I wouldn't personally buy embroidered stuff for R just because I'm cheap, if I was giving a blanket or a lovey to another baby, I would 100% get personalization, just because it's so great for day care purposes.

Name labels. For the first time, we need to label her sippy cups and lunchbox and other everyday items that are going to day care. For now, we're using blue duct tape, masking tape, and sharpies. Not really a permanent solution-- the tape would be fine for awhile if it didn't peel off endlessly, and it's certainly not dishwasher safe. I've ordered a set of these sticker labels from this Canadian website that I found after reading various online recommendations. I also saw these other labels that slip onto bottles and sippy cups that looked terrific, but went with the stickers since I wanted something that would go on her lunchbox and lunchbox case, and not just her sippys. If your child still takes bottles at daycare though, these seem like they'd be awesome.

Small diaper bag. For the first couple of days, we took R's big diaper bag to day care, but quickly realized that this was really overkill. While we need to provide the daycare with diapers and wipes, we don't need to pack them every day, so it just made sense for us to just give the day care a bunch (we're using disposables at day care even though we still use cloth at home. It's probably 50/50 cloth/disposable for us at this point), and not keep them in the daycare bag at all. We use this small bag for keeping daycare stuff separate from our out-and-about diaper bag. Keeps it organized and makes it easier to just grab that bag in the morning rather than constantly switch things from one bag to another.

In this small diaper bag we pack her giraffe, blanket, pacifier (she still sleeps with one but otherwise never uses it), a bag of snacks (animal crackers, cheerios, that sort of thing), her shoes and socks (if she's not already wearing them), a bib, and that's about it. The daycare keeps an extra outfit as well as diapers and wipes in her little cubby.

There will probably be other things we need, but for now, this is the stuff we've figured out for the first week or so.

If you have other tips, comments, helpful suggestions, etc. we'd love to hear them!