Thank You Ball

     Tonight Laura decided she was too awake to go to bed at her usual bedtime, 7:30PM, despite the fact that she had a maybe half hour nap today. So, after multiple attempts to get her to sleep, followed by much crying, we decided to let her get up and play for a little while more. Josh and I rearranged the playroom today (to be more accommodating of his recording studio that, as of late, he has been very gung-ho on improving) and I was hoping to finish putting things away down there after Laura went to bed. But instead, all three of us ended up in the new space playing a good round of Thank You Ball. 

     If you're wondering how to play, it goes a little something like this: Laura retrieves various balls from her new ball tent, and Mommy and Daddy sit on opposite sides of the room vying for her to bring them over. It was a competition of sorts to see who could convince her to give who more balls. As soon as she gave them to us, we promptly thanked her and then tried to toss the balls back into the tent from our seated positions. She didn't tire of retrieving balls for us for nearly half an hour. Josh and I made up random variations of what to do with the balls before tossing them back (just to keep it interesting), including but not limited to juggling (solo), juggling (team), and also contending for kisses from Laura in between. 

     After hearing us say 'thank you' to her over and over again, she started repeating some semblance of the phrase back to us. And so Thank You Ball was born. ♥

Today's Post is Brought to You by the Letter G

Ok, so maybe I've been watching too much Sesame Street lately ...

G is for Grover
     A few months back this clip came up on my Facebook newsfeed:

     And although I'm pretty sure it was meant as a joke - a spoof on the Old Spice commercials (which I haven't actually seen) - Laura came right over and promptly became fascinated. (To this day it remains one of her favourites). So I googled a few more Sesame Street clips for her and she seemed particularly interested in the ones with Grover. He was clearly her muppet of choice (thank god it wasn't Elmo!). 

     Since this was the first time she had shown an interest in her own 'thing', I decided to endorse it. Unfortunately, Grover is one of the seemingly less popular muppets, and there is not nearly as much readily available Grover paraphernalia as some of the others, so I took it upon myself to make her this. →  
     I had actually bought this sleeper as part of a 
three-pack because I wanted the plain red one for something else. The blue one was obviously a bit boyish, but it worked well for its new purpose. :)
     Laura's Australian auntie and uncle found a stuffed Grover over there and were kind enough to send her one for Christmas. It has become one of her favourite toys, so much that, when we took her for her birthday pictures this past weekend, it was the only thing that could hold her attention long enough to get a good photo. He even ended up in some of the takes. *rolls eyes*
     We also bought her a 'best of' DVD compilation of Grover for her birthday, which has succeeded in capturing her interest, as well. Although I'm a little wary after reading this post by my friend Jennie of her getting too attached... everything in moderation, right?


G is for Growth Spurt
     Apparently there is a "scheduled" growth spurt at the one year mark, and Laura is definitely complying. We had just gotten back into our normal sleeping routine of only waking once per night (read about our previous troubles here) only for her to start waking up 3 - 4 times a night again for the past couple of days. Not only that, but she has been fussier than usual and nursing around the clock. This morning alone I have nursed her at 4:30, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30, 9, 9:45, 10:30, 11:30... and probably one more time in the early morning, but I have given up trying to remember those feedings. You get the idea. All this nursing has made me ravenous, and needless to say, with her new teeth my nipples are a little sore. I am preparing to fill yet another Tupperware bin of outgrown clothes shortly. I will be interested to see how much she has grown at her 12 month doctor's appointment next week. 


G is for Godzilla
     The Second Law of Thermodynamics reminds me of Laura as it states that "the entropy of the universe is always increasing". In nature, it is observed that things are continually becoming more random and as disorganized as possible. And if Laura has anything to say about it, so is my house. This is generally what my living room looks like on any given day:

And this is how it gets that way: via Godzilla.

She isn't completely satisfied until everything within her reach has been scattered randomly across the floor. I've given up on bothering to pick it all up until she goes to bed because she can redo serious damage in a matter of seconds. It's not worth it.

G is for Growling

     And finally, Laura has recently taken up the adorable, albeit somewhat strange, habit of growling...

(ETA: video 19/ 03/ 11)

A Birthday Fit for a Princess

To party or not to party?

... was the question about a month ago. We were trying to decide whether to throw Laura a small get-together with just family on her actual birthday, or a bigger birthday party on the weekend... After much deliberating on the subject, we decided in the end to go with the all-out party, even though it was a lot of work, and she wouldn't remember it, and it was only for the parents, etc etc. I felt it was a big milestone and deserved a worthy celebration. Besides, I had fun planning it all, and it was worth it (though it was a lot of work). 

     Since Laura is too young to choose her own theme for her birthday, I snapped up the opportunity to have the mandatory princess party. 

Over-used theme? Yes. 

Still cute? In my possibly biased opinion, I think so. 

  
     While Laura was still in the first half of her first year I had already recruited Grandma to make her a princess dress for her birthday (this party was obviously a long time coming!). We had even picked out and bought the fabric for it. I googled pictures of princess dresses I wanted to model it after:
     

Picking and choosing elements from all three, this was the finished product: 

Adorable, if I do say so myself. :)

       I also googled images of castle cakes for inspiration, and this was the end product. Not exactly what I had originally pictured, but close enough. 

(And after probably five hours of cake-making, I really didn't even care anymore.)

     I had some gold curling ribbon that came as part of a Christmas set along with green, red, and white. I'm pretty sure it came from the dollar store, and therefore was at most 

25 cents worth. However, instead of just getting rid of it, I felt the need to put it to good use by spending $10 on balloons and $23 on a tank of helium. 

But then again, who doesn't love helium balloons (besides Chester)?

It still ended up being cheaper than having the balloons done for us anyway, 

and we didn't have to transport them.

 I wasn't going to go too heavy on many other decorations until a friend of mine who wouldn't be able to attend said she was "really looking forward to the pictures", which obviously ramped up the pressure to have awesome photos ;). And so I made this:

(and recruited Laura's uncle to blow up all the leftover balloons)
I also wanted to have something fun for the little kids to play with
since we weren't having planned activities.

On my birth board on BabyCenter there had been much talk about birthdays for months, and one helpful tidbit I picked up was that, in reality, people don't like loot bags. They're usually full of random dollar store junk that is fun for 30 seconds and then spends the rest of it's lifetime cluttering up your house until it finally finds its way to the trash. So one suggestion I thought was fun was to give $5 gift cards instead, since people are much more likely to like/ use that. I wanted to give them in a fun & creative way, so I ended up making wands for the birthday princesses out of Rice Krispie squares to attach them to:

      

and displayed them in a vase on the table like this:

We created a Laura shrine with all her monthly Chester photos above the food table:

The menu was mostly decided by choosing Laura's favourite foods:
meatballs, mango & avocado dip, cheese, etc. 

And here are the drinks (and photographic proof of Josh helping!):

Shirley Temple punch

And a few more random photos for a good measure:

Princess Cake Monster!

Hope you had a wonderful first birthday, Not-So-Baby Girl! ♥

I would also like to give special thanks to Laura's other grandma for all the help cleaning :), and also to our brave guests for battling the less-than-ideal road conditions to join us!

It's My Birthday?

     As of 7:40 this morning, I am 26 years old today. Happy birthday to me.

     So far my day has consisted of cleaning one poopy diaper, one pee off the nursery floor, one very sticky yogurt-and-blueberry mess off the highchair (said mess also required baby to bathed after, as well. Although, I guess I only have myself to blame for that; perhaps today was not a good day to see if Laura could learn to use a spoon on her own), stuffing and folding 30+ cloth diapers, and working on decorations for the impending First Birthday Party this weekend. All before noon.
     I also left Laura in the living room while I dashed up to use the bathroom and came back down to one of our Australian (read: very difficult to replace) DVDs out of its case and being stomped on and scratched on the floor.... 

     I don't know why I expected anything less, really. How is she to know that today is different than any other day? I guess I was just hoping for some magical birthday phenomenon of my child acting like an angel for me today.  

     It's not all bad though; tomorrow my mom is coming over and we are going to do something fun without Laura. Josh is taking the afternoon off work to watch her. Then he and my mom are going to trade so Josh and I can go out for dinner at my favourite local restaurant. Mmmmm. Something to look forward to. Hopefully I can forget about the stress of this silly party and relax a little.

*Sigh*. Life really isn't about you anymore once you have kids, even on your birthday!

Things I Love

     I don't even bother to pretend to hate Valentine's Day as some of my peers apparently do ;) (Friend #1, Friend #2). I mean, I guess I could jump on the bandwagon of hating corporations for capitalizing on women's sentimentality, or whatever the new trend-in-hating-stuff-for-"noble"-reasons is, but I have more important things to get worked up over. Besides, I like flowers and chocolate. So, capitalize away, I say.


     In honour of the upcoming St. Valentine's Day, I have created a list of things I love:

• I love Josh. Obviously. I love that he treats me like a princess, thereby continuing my illusion that I am one.
• I love Laura because she treats me like a slave mom, thereby breaking my illusion that I am a princess. ;)
• I love our animals. They are hilarious and loving and annoying all at the same time. 
• I love my mom and my family. And my in-laws are pretty great, too.
• I love lists. Seriously. With semi-permanent Mommy Brain (at least for the next 10 years or so) they are a godsend. 
• I love the feeling of collapsing into my awesomely comfortable bed when I'm exhausted. And, luckily for me, Laura ensures I experience this multiple times a night.
• I love our house. Even though it is definitely far from my dream house, it suits us right now quite nicely. 
• I love Facebook. It is my only window to the outside world some days. It makes staying home a lot less lonely.
• I love seasons, but especially spring. (hint hint, Mother Nature)
• I love laughing. Loudly. And playing board games.
• I love polka dots.
• I love breakfast food.
• I love Canada.
• I love shopping.
• I love breastfeeding.
• I love making stuff.
• I love sleep.
• I love homemade soup.
• I love science.
• I love nature.
• I love photography.

     In short, I love my life. 

~ Happy Valentine's Day 2011, everyone! ~

FTM Syndrome

     I try not to be the crazy, uptight, first-time-mom Mom, I really do. But it goes against my nature. I am a control freak. A perfectionist. And, above all, I am a First Time Mom. It's an uphill battle.
     
     In some ways, I think I've done all right keeping the FTM Syndrome at bay. I mean, I didn't sterilize Laura's soothers every time they fell on the floor or take her to the ER every time she bumped her head. But in other areas, my mothering instincts have gone into overdrive. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have spent many, countless hours researching what is generally agreed as the best of what parents can offer. I made the decision long ago to breastfeed because 'breast is best'. We decided not to co-sleep because it is advised against in order to prevent accidental suffocation. SIDS put the fear of god in me for letting Laura sleep with blankets. The list goes on and on. 
     
     It has now come time for us to choose a new car seat for Laura. And maybe my FTM Syndrome is flaring up again, but I have spent the last several days scouring the internet for the safest, most highly recommended models available, and have come up very frustrated with my options. One helpful tidbit of advice I came across in my search, though, was something to the effect that 'the best car seat you can get is the one that will be installed and used properly 100% of the time.' How true. Most of the children's deaths in vehicle accidents are due to user error, NOT due to a faulty seat. All of these seats go through and must pass rigorous tests before they can be put for sale on the market. It's not like you will be putting your child in a death trap by choosing one in the lower price range. I took this as a good starting point to develop criteria to ensure that our seat would be used properly every time. So, after all my research, these are the features I came up with that were the most important to us:

• easy to tighten harness to correct tightness while seat is rear-facing       I have always been a Nazi about Laura's                                                           harness being tight enough. And while it is fairly easy to get a good fit with the harness in her infant carrier when it is out of the car, trying to tighten it while in the car is a different story. Hence this being the biggest concern of mine about a car seat that will never leave the vehicle. See the belt I'm holding in the bottom left of the picture?       You pull on it to tighten the harness when the child is in the seat, but I'm sure you can see how this would be difficult to do when the car seat is installed in your vehicle with that belt-pull being almost pinched between the car seat and the back of the vehicle's seat.  Also, look at this. Even if you ignore the snowsuit part, you can see why having it tight enough is so important. 

• rear-faces until at least 35 pounds, preferably 40 Even though Laura is almost one, and will have met the minimum age requirement to ride forward-facing, she will be nowhere near the weight limit to be able to do so. Plus we would like to keep her rear-facing as long as possible, until at least age 3, since that is the new recommendation. Transport Canada now recommends keeping your child rear-facing as long as possible - yes, even if it means they have to sit with their legs crossed. A broken leg is a lot better than a broken neck! (See this). New car seat regulations were put into effect in January 2011 to increase the weight limits on rear-facing seats.
• uses LATCH feature for secure installation (which I think all of them do), and preferably can use the top tether as well for rear-facing installation for added security
• not too deep/ high sides, so it is reasonably easy to get child in and out of while seat is rear-facing
• comfortable and preferably with forward-facing recline options We generally use our vehicle for short trips around town to the grocery store, etc., but I also quite often take longer trips to my mom's house an hour away, during which time Laura ALWAYS falls asleep.

(There are a few more criteria I was hoping for, as well, but they were more so bonuses than requirements.)

     The seat I thought met all of these conditions is the Britax Boulevard 65 CS. The "CS" stands for the "Click & Safe" feature that ensures the harness is tight enough when buckling the child in. Great! ... with two exceptions: 1) the price tag of $370 and 2) when reading reviews on the Click & Safe feature, many parents reported that it didn't work properly and would click to indicate the harness was tight enough when it clearly was not. Well, there goes that idea.

     My next contender is the Evenflo Triumph 65 LX. It has a harness-tightening knob on the side of the seat (bonus! no reaming on the stupid belt-pull!), but the Canadian version only rear-faces until 30 pounds. ARGH. I feel like I can't win.

    It is probably between these two still, but I'm really having a hard time making up my mind between these two less-than-ideal seats. Probably the most frustrating part of it all is that seats that meet all my requirements (and more) are available in the States, but you can't buy them there and use them here. Fail, Canada.


    So there you have it, the latest episode of my FTM Syndrome. :)

Rage Pig

     One night a few months ago Laura was having one of her regularly scheduled tantrums (this particular one was performed for Daddy) who responded to her angry squealing with, "Rage Pig!".  And so a new nickname was born.

     In the last few days, Rage Pig has made a raging return. I mean, Laura is reasonably volatile at the best of times, but lately she has been uber fussy and completely intolerant, moody, and a general misery. Oh, and violent. In her defense, she had a good fever going on Sunday, but she no longer shows any outward signs deserving of increased attention or patience, making it very hard for me to sympathize with her. 

     For the last at least two weeks, she has been waking up as much as, if not more than, a newborn. (That automatically depletes a good portion of my patience quota right there. Ugh.) I don't know what is going on with her, but, once again, I can only hope it's a phase and I will be able to resume sleeping sometime soon. I was blaming it on her new teeth, but they're all through now, so I really don't know. Maybe it's a growth spurt. 

     I feel like I spend so much of my time as a mother having next to no clue what is going on with Laura. I guess to say that 'parenting has a learning curve' would be an under-statement. When we brought Laura home from the hospital, I was terrified of being responsible for caring for someone so tiny and fragile all on our own; I didn't know how to look after a baby! A lot of it is instinctive (thankfully), but nothing short of having your own children prepares you for how difficult it can be. Sure, people tell you that newborns don't sleep through the night, and that you'll be really tired... but for me, those words of wisdom went in one ear and right out the other. They didn't mean much until we were actually going through it in the moment. We were tired. We struggled to get along. I temporarily forgot most words that were more than four letters long. Oh yeah, this is what those 

well-meaning people must have been talking about! But then they tell you it gets better: 

"Babies sleep through the night eventually!" 

"Give it 12-13 weeks!" 

"Just wait until she reaches the magical, sleep-inducing weight of 11 pounds!" 

     Thanks for getting my hopes up, people. Now, at almost a year old and 17 pounds, my darling daughter still most certainly does NOT sleep through the night. (Even when she isn't rage pigging.) I don't know where your magical sleepy babies came from, but mine was from a different stork's nest!

     I've read that it is actually more the exception to the rule that babies sleep through the night at an early age. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But it made me feel a little better. I also read that babies who wake at night are less likely to die of SIDS. Another plus. And honestly, I don't mind waking once to get to cuddle and feed her, especially since she could use the calories, but these 1 - 2 hour stretches of sleep for Mom all night long lately is really turning me into a zombie. A grumpy, impatient zombie. I'm not one to do well on little sleep (and never have been). 

     When people (especially of the childless variety) ask me about how it's going, I try to give them an honest answer. It's NOT easy, and sometimes it's down right awful. There are, of course, joyous times as well, and usually they outweigh the bad (except today). Sometimes I wonder if the older generations are trying to trick us into furthering the human species by not really revealing how difficult it can be to raise kids. That, or there are just no words. I came across a quote the other day that made me sorta chuckle: "Children are a huge source of joy but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” 

While this may be a bit extreme and not completely true, I'm glad that it seems our generation is being more honest about how much work and patience and time and and and... it takes to bring up a family.

     So, after that whole Rage Pig-esque rant of my own, I would like to conclude with this quote:

"Parenting doesn’t plant a beatific smile on your face as much as 

give you a kick in the butt to say that life is not all about you."

~ Laura sends her love ~