Welcome, Marisa!

     Well, she's been here over a week now, so I figured I should give her a shout out. :)

Marisa is our new exchange student from Germany and will be staying with us for three months. We have lots of fun weekends planned while she is here, and are excited to show her the most beautiful country in the world. Amongst other things, we are planning to take her to Niagara Falls - something I am really excited for because I've been wanting to do a fun weekend away like that for a while now, so I thought we would collaborate the trip with our 4th anniversary in May while she is here. 

     Laura has really taken to her new "big sister". Every day when Marisa comes home from school, Laura insists on being picked up by her and having a snuggle. She also enjoys playing with Marisa's bracelets and earrings, and her shoes when they aren't in use. 

Uh Oh!

     Uh Oh! Laura is growing up so quickly these days it seems. 

     Yesterday she said 'uh oh' for the first time while we were at the mall eating lunch. She has since been practicing it by stomping around the living room throwing her books on the floor all morning:

it's funny because she usually says it with the 

wrong inflection and/ or says 'uh uh oh'

     Along with 'awww' and 'yeah' (and of course 'mommy' and 'daddy'), she has also started saying 'bah' (= ball), and even 'thank you' on the odd occasion; a product of Thank You Ball, no doubt. ;)

     Her most regular utterance though, by far, is still 'hi', accompanied by waving, which, more often than not, is directed toward herself in a 'come here' motion rather than waving at the person, as is traditional fashion. She even said hi to an elderly couple walking past us at Home Depot the other day without being prompted! What a good citizen. :)
 
     She also graduated to her first two-piece jammies last night, too (as seen in the 'uh oh' video). Now, If only we could get her to give up her newborn sleeping habits, we'd be laughing! 

     I'm so happy we are moving away from the screaming and grunting-like-a-caveman phase!

Laura's Games

     Lately Laura has been making up lots of little games to play with us (especially when she is bored), like Thank You Ball, which we play often now, 

the For Mommy/ Daddy, For Laura Game 

(probably more commonly known as the I Hand It to You, You Hand It to Me Game), 

and the latest installment this afternoon: 

Grab Me Before I Throw Myself Head First Over the Arm of the Couch Game

Grab me, grab me, Mom!

     The game goes as follows: Laura runs along on the couch over to the arm and threatens to tip herself over the edge (which she actually did once before). I scream and grab her leg and pull her back. She laughs her head off. Repeat. A hundred times. Vie for kisses in between.

     The early toddler stage has always been my favourite age, and Laura is only solidifying this preference as I am having more fun with her now than ever. She is so much more interactive and interesting and funny now. She makes me laugh every day. ♥

Emotionally Volatile

     At the end of 2008, I lost a baby at 11 weeks pregnant. This was a planned pregnancy and a baby we were very excited for. Devastated doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. I won't elaborate on it any more than that, since dredging up those memories is still quite painful. Since then, I feel like my body chemistry hasn't been quite right. I have become emotionally volatile. I spent a number of months an emotional wreck afterwards, and falling pregnant with Laura was bittersweet to say the least. I spoke with my doctor on more than one occasion about my emotional state, but, being a naturalist, he was hesitant to prescribe antidepressants. He suggested more exercise and eating better. Being a naturalist myself, I didn't want to be on antidepressants anyway. 
     Being pregnant adds a whole new level of volatility to your emotions as it is, and I struggled throughout that time to cope and keep a handle on it. Blaming my crazy pregnancy hormones, I thought my emotions would regulate after Laura was born. Nope. I had a bit of 'baby blues' for about two weeks postpartum (crying at the silliest little things - I cried one morning in the hospital because I wasn't able to give Chester my soggy toast crust.) And now, even after 13 months, though I don't think I necessarily suffered from postpartum depression per se, the emotional volatility continues. Especially around that time of the month. I don't ever remember being so completely out-of-control-enraged as I can get now. And the logical part of my brain usually seems shocked that I am so mad at such insignificant events, which doesn't really help. I'm sure not sleeping through the night in over 13 months doesn't help either. 
     Anyway, I'm not too sure what the point of this post is, other than perhaps for much needed venting and self-justifying my feelings. Anyone else gone through this?

A Photo Project

     On Laura's first birthday we took her for a professional photoshoot (which she was less than pleased about and was highly uncooperative for, but that's another story.) 
For the package of prints we got, we were mostly able to choose which poses and sizes of each that we liked, but we still ended up getting stuck with a whole sheet of 16 "keepsake" photos. They are about 1" x 1.5" and are really no good for anything other than lockets. And who has 16 of those?

     So, being the non-waster that I am, I decided to improvise and include them in a creative way so they wouldn't go unused. (I actually borrowed the idea from a beautiful little collage of photos our new exchange student sent).  

     I took the keepsake photos and cropped them down to only her sweet little face, and then matted them on either a colour-coordinating mat of torn or heart-shaped cardstock. I mounted them in the corner of larger wallet-sized pictures and included a colour-coordinating mat with those as well. I may be biased, but they seem like they will make a nice addition to our family's fridge collections. :)

       

     P.S. Her pretty little dress was made by her Great Aunt Elaine. :)

Point Talking

     In the last week or so Laura has been working on improving her communication skills. Via point talking (accompanied by grunting). She took up pointing sometime in the last two or three weeks, and more recently discovered that she can get things she wants faster if she can more accurately (than just wailing) convey to me what said thing is. Like the other day, when we were checking out the progress the contractor had made in the kitchen, and she started frantically indicating she would like to investigate something. His drill, I figured out, by following the finger. Sorry, Laura, you're a little too young to play with power tools. Especially ones that don't belong to us.

     The problem is, only about half the time do I know what she is even referring to. Friday morning, for instance, as Josh was getting ready to head out the door to work, I told her to say bye to Daddy, and she just started madly gesturing at something out the window. We couldn't at all figure out what she was pointing at. The tree? The rain? The street? The melting snowbank? Fortunately, she didn't seem to be to frustrated by our lack of perception. I'm looking forward to more real words, I'm sure it will be less confusing for everyone involved.

Too Busy for Blogging

      I haven't posted in a while because we've been really busy lately... 

      My grandfather had been unwell and in the hospital since about Christmastime, but was doing increasingly poorly this week, so we took time to go and visit him. He passed away on Tuesday evening. 
      We were also all sick again this past weekend/ last week, which left us incapacitated for a day.
      And amongst all that we've been trying to redo our kitchen, which has been no pleasant task. Josh took Monday - Wednesday off this week to tear out the old kitchen:

      It took him most of two days just to tear up the floor because the subfloor was stapled in approximately a million places and would just crumble every time he tried to pry it up. 

A very messy job indeed. 

Goodbye, ugly 80's vinyl!

     He was able to take out the base cabinets by himself fairly easily, but even with my help the upper cabinets were tricky, so we had to recruit our neighbour's help to get them off. Living without a sink has been interesting.

      We had the electrician here for most of the day yesterday to re-wire our kitchen lights/ switches, get the dishwasher hook-up ready, and set up another outlet for a microwave range hood. 

Then there was lots of drywall patching, priming, and painting to do last night.

See, I helped! :)

     I had been struggling to choose a colour scheme for the kitchen because I wanted to use wallpaper for an accent wall behind the table, but couldn't find one that I liked (and hence couldn't choose a complementary paint colour). Then, I accidentally happened to go down the in-stock wallpaper aisle at Home Depot the other day, and found one that I really loved! I hadn't thought of checking the in-stock wallpaper! So, we chose a khaki-ish paint colour that goes with the wallpaper, as well as the rest of the main floor of our house. 

(Note our pretty new pot light above the sink!)

      We wanted to get the paint on the walls before the cabinets were installed so it wouldn't be so hard to paint around them. We still need to paint the bulkhead, and the other half of the kitchen not pictured here, which is too full of stuff to be able to get at right now. 

     I have the Mommy Guilt because Laura's been babysat by Sesame Street a lot the last few days. :S But, last night, while we were waiting for paint to dry, we took some much needed family time together and watched The Wedding Singer (which Josh was unreasonably excited about).

     The cabinet installer is here today and this is what my kitchen looks like:

And this is what my basement looks like: 

And this is only about half of it! The guest room is full of kitchen refuse too.

     We've been working from the time we get up in the morning until we go to bed trying to get things done, so it's been exhausting. I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end, though. :)

Micro Monkey

     Today Laura had her 12 month check-up and shots. It was not a good day. Mommy doesn't cope well with the shots, even though I'm not the one getting them. Seeing the look in her eyes as she screams in pain while I am facilitating someone hurting her is just not something I deal well with. :( Plus she had a fever yesterday and was up most of the night, so I was a bit sketchy on her getting her shots in the first place.
But anyway, on to the point of the post:
 

     Laura started out a tiny little peanut at 5 pounds 14 ounces, and 18 inches. And no, she wasn't premature. Just small. She did double her birth weight by 4 months but after 6 months her growth really plateaued. At Laura's 9 month check-up she was starting to lack in the weight department, falling under the 3rd percentile, while her height was about 60th. I had a mild freak out (FTM Syndrome?) and began reducing her table food intake so that she would nurse more instead, which has more calories, and theoretically would help her gain weight. Apparently my efforts were in vain as she has only gained about a pound in total since her 6 month check-up. Yes. One pound in 6 months. UGH. She isn't even on the charts anymore.
     I'm trying not to freak out about it because everyone is built differently and it's not fair to compare, and she started out small, etc etc, but it's hard. Our doctor had a talk about it with me, and he says she seems perfectly healthy and he isn't worried about it. So I guess I will try not to worry either. At least she'll fit in the infant carrier a while longer. As Daddy puts it, she is just a micro monkey.