Ready or not

Ryanne's standing hiatus seems to be over. She's doing LOTS more standing, with everything. Yesterday, Mick gave her the walker (looks sort of like a kiddie lawn mower) and she even did some walking around with that. She may yet walk by the end of the month - YIKES.

She's doing more exploring and getting more rebellious already. "No" will still usually make her stop doing something, but I still try to reserve it for the really dangerous things like power cables or the outlets on the wall. She also responds really well to her name and I use that for some of the lesser infractions, like eating important papers. :) There are times, though, that all she does is smile at me when I say her name or No and then off she goes back to whatever. This one's going to be trouble.

She's getting much better at eating. She's pretty good about having something at each meal. Dinner is still the hardest and I think it's because she's getting tired. She wants to go to sleep or play with the toys she hasn't seen all day, not be stuck in the high chair. Hopefully it will get easier when she doesn't spend days away from home.

She really seems to be tiring of baby food. She'd much rather have stuff that she can pick up with her fingers. She's getting much better at picking things up with her thumb and pointer finger. She's still not using just the tip of the pointer, but she's getting closer every day. She likes meals that she feeds herself better than the ones she eats from a spoon so I try to save those for dinner when she's least likely to eat anyway. It seems to be working so far. She feeds herself green beans, carrots, pears, bread, crackers, the Gerber foods (biter biscuits, zwieback, fruit and veggie puffs, wagon wheels, etc).

Right now, I can hear dada telling her to splash in the bath and her little hands hitting the water - what a sweet sound. He's taught her how to turn the light in the bathroom on and off and she just LOVES doing this. We'll have to find her one of those extenders so she can do it from the ground in approved rooms once she gets walking. She also LOVES brushing her tooth. No clue when the next ones will show up, but no signs of them yet.

Her other trick with dada is staying really stiff and letting him hold her up by her hips. He sticks her out like a superhero flying, holds her above his head, and holds her out from his chest. She really enjoys it.

And now, she's whining mamamamama and making the sign for milk so I guess I know where I ought to be.

Still not standing...

Well, Ryanne seems to have given up on standing up. She's gone back to just crawling everywhere, and becoming quite the crawler. She is getting SO fast that she actually made it to the plug on the other side of the couch and pulled the plug cover out before I caught up to her (she can squeeze through between my rocker and the couch and I can't). Nothing seems to slow her down, even the dresses grandma sent!

She still seems to enjoy walking with someone holding her up, though. She's practically running when she does that, even. She takes these huge steps and moves very quickly.

We're realizing that we don't point and identify objects very much so we're starting to work on that. She's starting to play "Where is?" a lot better. If you ask where dada or mama are, she'll look around until she sees the right one. She still doesn't clap, but she is doing lots more waving hi and bye and starting to do it when requested. Tonight, she even started some mimicking - I was laughing and she started looking at me and giggling, too. It cracked me up even more! I think she may even know what "mama" means when she says it, but I want a few more trials of context to be sure.

I think her cold is almost gone. Hopefully this means she'll go back to sleeping well. I really miss my 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Right now, I'm lucky if she's not up for the first time by 1a. I barely wake up once she's in bed with us (yes, still doing some co-sleeping, for my own sanity) so I get a decent night's sleep, but it's not the same. She's fully trained away from needing to suck on one of our fingers to go to sleep. Right now, her pacifier is music, but that's not a big deal to us. Even Chrys needed music to fall asleep until he started sleeping with me and it kept me awake. :) Chrys was even able to get her to fall asleep in her crib tonight just by stroking her head and back. This is a change from falling asleep in our arms to the music. Slowly, but surely, I think we'll get a great sleeper!

Chrys started back to work full-time on Monday. This lasted until Wednesday before I cracked and ended up a sputtering mess begging him to only work half-time. Now, he's flexing his days (per his manager) so that he only works in the mornings. He'll end up making up the hours later, and then some.

Try, try again...

Here I tried to start a new journal and failed miserably. I think I need to give up on trying to rehash what she's accomplished. I have most of the milestones recorded elsewhere.

I guess I should talk about her initial attempts to crawl. They were quite funny. I nicknamed her faceplant. She had this odd technique where she would plant her hands and then stick her butt up in the air while keeping her feet on the ground. It looked most like the downward facing dog pose that is used in yoga . The biggest difference is that she would look forward and not behind her. Then, she'd push with her toes until she fell face forward on the floor - hence, faceplant. Then, the arms would come back out and the process would repeat. It was truly amusing to watch, but it got her from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time so I certainly can't criticize. That's been the biggest hurdle for me with childrearing. I watch her and think, "That's not the right way to do that." At the same time, she gets the goal accomplished so I have to learn to let her be her own person and do her own thing. Crawling was the big one. I kept saying she wasn't crawling because she wasn't on her hands and knees crawling like a 'normal' baby. Eventually, Chrys pointed out that she got the job done and I should just admit she was there. I did...it was recorded in her calendar. A few weeks later, she figured out the 'right' way, but she had that extra time of mobility that I couldn't deny.

Now, of course, she's moving on. She's still quite content to crawl, but is becoming less pleased with not being able to really see where she's going. Tonight, I let go of her hand while she was standing up and she stayed there for 8 seconds, twice. This beats the previous 5 second record observed by her father. There's actually a funny story that goes along with her learning to stand. After we got past the tears of hitting various body parts against the floor, she decided it was a ride. She would stand with one hand on something for balance, get this really excited look on her face and then let go. The giggles that came with the falling to the floor were priceless.

Heh...someday I may get in trouble for recording just the funny stories of her growing up. I figure, though, that when I look back, I'm going to want to remember those and not stuff like the fact that she's got another cold and we're struggling with the fights agains the nose sucker and gasping for air as she nurses. That's not the fun stuff. Kids are all about good memories...so bring on the funny stories.

Firsts...

Well, I had been updating my pregnancy blog with Ryanne's milestones and early achievements. That blog, though, had been to keep my dad up-to-date and I just have a hard time finding the motivation to post to it anymore. Thus, I am starting with a clean slate. This is a new journal that's dedicated to recording her life, not her time in utero. She's an amazing little girl and I want to remember as many of these events as I can. Hopefully this will help.

I have little chance of remembering the dates for most of the firsts. I must confess that Chrys and I have mostly fudged the dates in her calendar. They're in the right week, but since all of the days kind of blur together, they may not be on the right day. Hopefully she can forgive us.

Let's start with the story of rolling over. It was my brother's spring break and he was "working" down at the office with us. He had decided to come in and play with Ryanne. All of a sudden he says, "She rolled over." I look up and sure enough, she's on her tummy instead of her back. I started quizzing him - not quite trusting this story. He assures me that he didn't help her at all, except to keep moving her music block away from her, so I flip her back over. I put the toy just out of reach and within a few moments she was back on her tummy playing with it again. It was the coolest thing to watch. It took her a few days to let Dada see her new trick, but eventually she caved. It only took a few weeks for her to master tummy to back in the same direction (to her left when on her back). I'd guess she had the other direction (her right) down about 6 weeks later.

Unfortunately, with this new trick came some new independence. No longer was she satisfied being strapped down in one place. She knew she could roll her way out of most things. This meant that she thought she could roll her way out of her car seat. It being a 3-point harness, infant seat, it didn't offer sufficient restraint for our roller. Once we found her strapped down by her knee (instead of her pelvis), we ordered her new 5-point harness seat. There were a few days of intense frustration at being that confined in the car. Eventually, though, Ryanne realized that she was now higher and could see more things outside that in her previous seat and the yelling and screaming in the car came to an end.

6 month appointment

Backdated. Copied from FTM to fill in historical data in one location.

She's 1oz shy of 17lbs (should have nursed her first - hee) and 25 3/4" long. She's no longer 90%, 75% for weight, height - down to 75% and 50%, I think the dr said. The dr was very impressed by her sitting up by herself and surprised when Ryanne was trying to take steps when she stood her up. She smiled at us and said, "She'll be walking by 9months...hope you're babyproofed." YIKES! I certainly won't be disappointed if she proves the dr wrong on THAT one.

The dr took a look at a rash on her back and said it was probably related to her sniffles (viral rash) combined with a little eczema and gave me some ointment to try on some spots and see if it helps more than just lotion alone.

Also, her vaginal adhesion was gone. We mentioned that it had opened up and closed back up and opened again in the time since her last appointment. We had to use the cream again. She said that was the right thing to do and just keep an eye on it and use the cream to keep it open as necessary.

When we got home, she was playing on the floor (a huge relief after 6 hours in the car) and pushed herself from her tummy to sitting. I'm not sure she knows how to replicate it, but she was SO happy to have figured it out that time.

I picked up a pamphlet on donating milk to the bank in Austin - www.mmbaustin.org. The website doesn't have many specifics on the mechanics of the actual donation, just the requirements for the mom. I think I'll call and figure out how it works. Has anyone here donated?