Author: Amy

The Traveling Resumes

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The holidays are a time to be spent with family. Unfortunately, my family lives approximately 10 hours away and my in-laws live about 5 hours away (both driving distances). So, tomorrow night we begin our holiday travels. We will be driving through the night to go to my parents’ house. Why through the night, you ask? Two reasons. One is that my husband’s work holiday party is tomorrow night. The other is that it is much easier to drive that far with a baby when she is sleeping the whole way. Easier for us, and also easier for her. So, we will probably hit the road at around 10 tomorrow night and we’ll stay with my parents for about a week. Then we’ll be back home for the week before Christmas and leave on Christmas Eve afternoon to go visit my in-laws and spend Christmas weekend with them.

We travel a lot, so these two trips are really not a big deal, relatively speaking. It has been nice to be home for a few weeks. But I can’t imagine not seeing our families at holiday time. I really can’t wait to visit with my family again, even if I do have to go to Tiny Town, USA where there is no internet connection to be found. No, I shouldn’t say that. Mom and Dad do have dial-up. Too bad my computer can’t even hook up to a dial-up connection!! So, if I’m absent from blog-land for a while, you’ll know why. I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, didn’t get sucked into a black hole, just went to visit the ‘rents. It’ll be fantastic. My dad is a great cook. My mom bakes tons of yummy treats (but only if I have my hubby with me; last time I went he wasn’t with me and I got diddly squat:). My mom and I will watch “Heidi” and the day that we choose to do our “Christmas” (which obviously won’t be on Christmas Day), we’ll have creamed eggs for breakfast. Yum. And I really can’t wait to see Miss’s face when she experiences the holiday gift-opening event for the first time. I love holiday traditions. Happy Holidays!!!!

Random Thoughts for a Tuesday

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1. It’s snowing here and it’s so pretty outside. We’re supposed to get a blizzard though, and I don’t want to end up being cooped up in the house!

2. I need to get my Christmas cards addressed. We got them yesterday and I’m so excited to get them sent out. Miss’s debut holiday photo card!
3. Miss has learned to make a fish face, which is totally cute!!
4. I’m entertaining the thought of getting back to work on a quilt I had planned to make for Miss before she was born. Never got it going, but I have the fabric and I think I would like to get it done.
5. I’m feeling so lazy and really have nothing interesting to say today. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.

The Secret to my Stash

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I have a secret. It’s one of my very favorite “go to” diapers that makes my life so easy. I say it’s a secret because the diapers come from a small company and I don’t know a ton of people who have them. They’re called HuggaBuns and they are such fantastic diapers. I bought some HuggaBuns in my very early days of cloth diapering, largely because they were quite inexpensive and because they have hemp and bamboo inserts. I fell in love with them and have bought many more HuggaBuns over the past several months.

I originally ordered both smalls and mediums, thinking Miss could wear the smalls right away and then grow into the mediums. She started out being able to wear both sizes (5 to 6 months ago) and can still wear both sizes!!!

Here’s Miss in a Medium when I first got these diapers. She was about 4 months old.

Here she is in a Small more recently. The Smalls still fit her this well!
The small diapers come with a trifold hemp insert and the mediums come with a trifold bamboo insert. These inserts are super absorbent and the diapers are so trim!! I always use the smalls for naptime, and I use both sizes for any time! They are great when we are in the car for a long time. I almost always put one on her when we are going out to run errands because I know it will last a long time in case I can’t find a good place to change her, and they don’t leak! I also have a bunch of extra inserts, and the bamboo ones in particular are the perfect fit to put in many of my other diapers. I have lots of dipes that come with microfiber inserts, which just aren’t really my favorite. So I have taken out the microfiber and used the HB trifold bamboo inserts instead, and now I love lots of my other diapers even more too! The HBs come clean easily, and they are just such an all-around good diaper that I find myself reaching for one all the time. I was disappointed that they didn’t come in a one-size option, and the color selection is somewhat limited, but I have been told they’re coming out with a new OS style in some new colors soon!
HuggaBuns are obviously one of my very favorite pocket diapers. Other favorites include my Blueberry pockets, SoftBums all-in-twos, and newly discovered Peachy Keen pockets. I have also recently discovered a love for fitteds and wool, and I’m bringing more of these types of diapers into my stash and using them more and more. Maybe in another post I’ll tell you all about the wonderful world of wool and some of my favorites in that category, but for now I’ll just leave you with a photo of Miss in a “nifty” fitted diaper with a “woolie” cover over it!!

I Hate Toasted O’s

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Miss loves them. Yet I live in fear that she will choke on one of these tiny Os. Actually, I live in fear that she will choke on pretty much anything that is small enough to get into her mouth. I wish I could feed her pureed mush until she’s 10. Unfortunately for me, she loves to feed herself. Some things, like butternut squash, she flat out refuses to eat mashed on a spoon. However, yesterday I cut up some cubes of squash that I had baked, and she gobbled them up because she could do it herself.

I have such a huge fear of choking that, for several months, when I was beginning to feed her “solid” (though really pureed or mashed) foods in her high chair, I would have a mini panic attack every time Miss would take a poo during mealtime (which unfortunately happens fairly frequently). She would hold her breath and her face would get all red and my mind would immediately jump to “Oh my Gosh, she can’t breathe, she’s choking!!” This would only last a split second until I came to my senses and realized she was just taking a dump. But it was always long enough for my breath to catch and my heart to stop. Sometimes I would even start to come out of my chair, all set to snatch her up and do the baby Heimlich. I mean, can you imagine? Here’s my daughter peacefully and happily filling her drawers, when her nut-bar mother yanks her up out of her chair, turns her upside down and starts pounding on her back??? I have to laugh at myself when I picture it. Fortunately, I have gotten used to the red-faced mealtime poop and I now only have a teeny tiny whisper of anxiety before I remember (“Deep breath, it’s just poo…”).
Unfortunately, we are now moving into the land of more and more truly solid foods. I know she needs to learn to feed herself. I know it’s great for her to eat things like little pieces of turkey, toast, soft veggies. Most of those cause only mild anxiety for me. But man, those toasted O’s just freak me out. This is probably because Miss actually did nearly choke on one of these once, and I actually did have her out of her highchair and nearly started banging on her back when she managed to cough it up. Talk about heart-stopping panic. So now she only gets the O’s covered with something like yogurt or pureed fruit. Then they get kind of mushy, but she can still pick them up and feed herself, which she did happily this for breakfast this morning. Of course, I hovered over her while she ate, watching like a hawk for any sign of choking, feeling just a slight flutter of anxiety every time she put one in her mouth, a little bit more when she would try to cram too many in there at once. I think my voice sounded calm when pulling her hand back down and instructing her “One at a time please. Chew, chew, chew!” Heaven help me when she starts eating things like steak!

I Miss You Nap

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Dear Nap,

Please come back. I mean really come back, not just for 30 minutes here or there. These days it seems like the only beings in our house who get any attention from you are the old dogs. Miss really needs you. I need you to spend a little bit more time with Miss. I have to write a report for my most recent evaluation, and my house desperately needs some major cleaning. And really, I just need to regain my sanity a little. You understand, don’t you, Nap? Okay. Thanks.
Sincerely,
The Mom

Bah Humbug!

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I love to put up my Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. I refuse to put them up before Thanksgiving, and doing it the day after gives me the maximum amount of time to enjoy them. Well this year, it just didn’t quite work out to get them up on Friday. I didn’t mind too much though and just planned to get them up today. My hubby helped me get the tree up and then volunteered to play with Miss while I proceeded to decorate.

I plugged in the lights on my wonderful prelit tree. The super convenient and very beautiful tree that I was so excited to buy last year. Background: I used to have a tree that was given to me by a friend in graduate school when she and her husband upgraded. It was so great to have that tree for free as a poor graduate student. It was a full-size tree and it served it’s purpose, although it was not very lovely. Once I had all my beautiful ornaments on it, you could barely tell that it was hideous underneath. So I kept that ugly hand-me-down tree for 10 years, and when we moved from North Carolina, I decided it was time to let it go and get another one. After our last Christmas in NC I didn’t even pack the tree away in the attic. I hauled it directly to the Goodwill, knowing that I would buy a new one for the first time when we relocated to our new home. Last year was the year, and I splurged on a prelit tree. I was so excited and it was perfect.
That was last year. Unfortunately this year one of the strands of lights shorted out and only half of it lit when plugged in. This left a band of unlit tree about two thirds of the way up from the bottom. The tree has a warranty though, so I just called the company, thinking I would get them to send me a new tree. Haha. The woman gave me suggestions on how to fix the problem (check the fuses and make sure none of the bulbs were missing or loose) and then told me that, if these measures didn’t fix the problem, they would send me a new strand of lights. Strand of lights??? Not a new tree. Shoot. So I checked every bulb on that strand. Ben changed the fuses even though they looked fine. I really didn’t want to have to string new lights on the tree. I thought my days of stringing lights on the tree were over. But no. The problem was not a loose bulb, nor was it a blown fuse. The problem was a piece of junk strand of lights, which would need to be replaced.
I decided to just go to the store and get a strand of the same kind of lights for $4 instead of going through the rigamarole of getting new lights through the warranty. Then I went through the tedious task of unstringing the lights that came on the tree. This wasn’t your ordinary unstringing either. When I put lights on a tree, I loop them around a bit, but it’s not all that complicated to get them off again. Well these lights were so wrapped and twisted around every branch of the tree they might as well have been super-glued! Alas, I finally got them off and strung my new strand on (much more loosely I must say), only to find that there was a chunk of tree that my new strand would not reach to cover. What did I do, you ask? Without hesitation I asked my husband to help me turn the tree around to put that bare patch right where it belonged, facing the corner. I guess the rest of the decorations will be put up tomorrow…

Thankful

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I have so much to be grateful for. A wonderful, supportive husband who works hard so I can stay home with Miss. A beautiful, healthy, happy baby girl who makes me laugh and brightens my world every day. Two great old loyal dogs. A fantastic extended family and in-laws who I actually like and enjoy spending time with. The perfect sometimes-job that lets me stay sharp in my professional skills but mostly work from home, and only as frequently as I want to. Good friends, good health, a beautiful home… I could go on and on.

I love Thanksgiving. It’s so nice to have a holiday that is focused on family and being grateful for our blessings. I think being a mom takes “thankful” to a whole different level. My daughter is healthy and I get to spend every day at home with her. What more could I ask for? Though I try never to take my good fortune for granted, I love this day that brings the “Thanks” right up front and center. I had a wonderful day with my husband and daughter and made a fantastic meal (if I do say so myself) to top it all off. Life is good. Happy Thanksgiving.

More “Miss”-cellany

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I can’t believe Miss is nine months old. Where did the time go? It seems as though the past nine months of her little life have flown by so much faster than the nine months I was pregnant and waiting (and waiting!) for her to arrive. She is now crawling at lightning speed, easily pulling up to standing, and doing the “look Mom, no hands!” move in trying to stand on her own. She is starting to cruise along a bit as well. She has gotten three more teeth (for a grand total of six) and is sleeping through the night consistently.
She is eating three solid meals per day now and has a good appetite. She is also very opinionated about what she does and doesn’t like. She has moved from just fruits and veggies and a little bit of oatmeal to dairy and proteins. Her new favorites are cottage cheese and turkey. She loves them so much in fact, she really can’t be bothered with vegetables anymore. I have to mix almost any vegetable she eats with cottage cheese in order to get some good carbs in her! The exceptions to this are sweet potato and sometimes zucchini. She does still like fruit, but her favorite for breakfast now is toasted O’s cereal covered in yogurt. This is quite messy, but she loves it. She is beginning to get bored with pureed or mushy foods that need to be fed to her on a spoon and wants to do everything herself. In fact sometimes the only way I can get her to eat mushy food is to let her have her own spoon so she can “help,” or give her something to eat with her fingers and sneak spoonfuls of food in between bites she feeds herself. Feeding her is truly an exercise in patience!
She is showing some funny new facial expressions. Ben says she is starting to be just like me in this regard. She now crinkles her nose quite a bit, which he says I do all the time (I didn’t realize this) and she sticks her little tongue out when she’s concentrating, which I definitely do all the time! She also does a cute little full-body wiggle when she gets excited, which I have been known to do also 🙂 She makes a funny little fish smile, where she half-smiles and sort of sucks her cheeks in at the same time. Don’t know where she got that one, but it’s adorable.


Miss is becoming more and more vocal and likes to make lots of new sounds. She makes some funny growling and grunting noises now and her vocal inflection is very expressive. She also has said her first word, “Ma-ma” of course. I love it. I have been working on a few ASL signs with her and she definitely understands many of them – “milk, eat, more” though she has yet to definitely make any of them yet. There was one time I was pretty sure she signed “all done” and another time I think she signed “milk” but it’s a little hard to tell, so maybe not. Either way, she is definitely getting more and more communicative.

We are really looking forward to celebrating the holidays with her for the first time this year. Her first Christmas should be a blast and I have had such fun shopping for her. I can’t believe that thoughts of her first birthday party have already begun to creep into my thoughts from time to time. It will be here before I know it!