Tutus and Sleep

Posted on by Amy
I decided that I wanted some tutus for my girls, so I went to my favorite resource, Etsy, to find some. Except that I couldn’t quite find just what I was looking for. And while most of the tutus could have been custom ordered, I realized that I could make some cheaper than buying them. So, I made a trip to my beloved Hobby Lobby the other day. And I went nuts in the tulle section.

While we were selecting the tulle, I was telling Miss that I was going to make her some tutus, and she got quite excited. Then every time she saw the pile of tulle on the counter in my laundry room, she kept saying, “My tutu!!” I’m not sure that she really understood what a tutu is, and I had to keep explaining to her that Mommy has to make the tutus first. After a day or two I got my act together and looked around online and found a few good tutorials. The one I chose to try was this one. I pulled out my rotary cutter and cutting board and went to town cutting strips of tulle.
Knotted it around the elastic, and voila! The hardest part of the whole thing was taming the static electricity while cutting and knotting the tulle strips.
And now, an update on the sleep in our house. I blogged before about my efforts to get Lass sleeping through the night without waking up and needing to nurse to go back to sleep. I am happy to announce that after only about 3 nights, we managed to cut out middle-of-the-night feedings. Hooray!
For about a week she was still waking up a few times at night and fussing a bit, but always managed to get back to sleep on her own. We have now had one night of 7pm to 7am sleep without waking, so I’m hopeful that will be the norm now. What a good girl!!
As for Miss, the transition to the Big Girl Bed has gone pretty well. The first night, as I posted previously, she went to bed with no trouble. She has continued to do wonderfully at bedtime. Naptime, on the other hand, was a bit of a struggle for a few days. Part of the problems was that I hadn’t really thought through how I would handle it if she repeatedly got out of bed (recall my complete denial that this transition would be happening in this decade and my resultant lack of preparation for it). So day one of Big-Girl-Bed naptime found her getting out of bed to play, over and over, and me repeatedly going into her room and putting her back in her bed. There was a lot of crying (mostly from her) and frustration (mostly from me). Finally I heard her yell, “I have a big poop on my bonnom!!” So I went up to change her diaper and put her back in bed and just decided to stay in the room until she fell asleep. I sat by her door and she was out in two minutes. However, I didn’t really want sitting by her door that to become a habit. So, for day two, I decided to try something different.
Day two naptime I decided to just let her get out of bed, figuring it was fine as long as she played quietly in her room and that she would wear herself out eventually, get into bed, and go to sleep. Except that it didn’t work out that way. She played for at least an hour and then started screaming that she had a poopy diaper again. I suspected this was just her way of getting me to come in her room, but went to check her diaper anyway. Sure enough, there was no poop. I had a brief discussion with her about the importance of telling the truth, and then put her back in bed and decided to try sitting by her door again. This time she popped right up from lying down and said, “Hi Mommy, what you doing?” In spite of attempts to get her to lie back down and sleep, I finally realized it just wasn’t going to happen, so day two was a complete nap failure.
I needed to regroup. I needed a plan. I remembered hearing about something called “Sleep Rules” in passing before. So I Googled it. I found info about Dr. Weissbluth’s Sleep Rules strategy and poster. It says to try it with kids 2.5-3 years old. But I figured Miss could get it, so I went for it. Here’s the poster I made.
I changed the Sleep Rules a bit from the ones Dr. W recommends, but these seemed more reasonable for her. She likes to chatter while falling asleep and I don’t see any harm in that, so didn’t want to make “Stay very quiet” a rule. We review the Sleep Rules before every naptime. After each sleep (nap or bedtime) that she follows the Sleep Rules, she gets a cool puffy glitter sticker to put on the Sleep Rules poster, and when she fills all the boxes, she’ll get to watch movie. I’m talking this up like it’s the coolest thing ever, since she’s never really seen a movie, and I was worried this incentive would be a bit ineffective. But she also gets stamps on her hands, feet, legs, etc., and sometimes another sticker from one of our books.
And it’s working!!! The first few days I still had to go in once or twice and put her back into her bed. I just said, “Stay in your bed” and eventually she did. Now she generally doesn’t even get out anymore.
So. Tutus, cool. Sleep, fine. But wait! Now I will connect these seemingly unrelated ramblings into a coherent, logical blog post.
As I mentioned above, most days the reward for following the rules is a sticker and some stamps. But a couple days ago, I decided to let the tutu be the reward. As I was putting Miss down for her nap I told her that if she followed the Sleep Rules today she would get to play with her tutu. She seemed so into the whole tutu thing, and I was so excited to see how much she would love the tutu I made for her. Unfortunately she woke up from her nap (she did follow the rules!) a little crabby.
She just wasn’t really into the tutu. At first she didn’t want anything to do with it. So I just put it on the floor and she decided it might be okay to sit on it.

She liked the way it feels.

She finally decided to put it on.
She got about this far and changed her mind. “I no yike it tutu.”
We left the tutu for a while. Had a snack. Went to gymnastics. Came home and had dinner. And then we tried the tutu again. She liked it much more.

She even shook her booty in it a bit.
In general, she doesn’t really love it as much as I thought she would. I was kind of expecting that she would put it on and refuse to take it off. She likes to play with it but doesn’t put it on much. But she is just at the beginning of the loving-to-dress-up phase. So the tutu will go into the dress up box and I suspect it will be worn as the dress-up love grows. She may be a fairy. Or a princess. Or a ballerina. Or something completely unrelated to tutus. I could see her as a tutu-wearing dinosaur or something equally fun. I will make more tutus. I have to. I still have 3 lbs of tulle in my laundry room.

Lass at 6 Months

Posted on by Amy
Look at this angel face.

I could just stare and stare at my beautiful littler Little.

She is such a good-natured baby. She is mellow and happy and sweet. Much of the time she’s just content to hang out and observe the world around her.



She does have a bit of a temper, but unless she’s hungry or tired, she can be soothed pretty easily.



She’s starting to show her personality and curiosity more and more.

She smiles and laughs a lot and is just starting to babble a little. “Mamamamamama” is the little babble she does so far.
She is very efficient at getting items straight to her mouth, where she enjoys chewing and or sucking on everything.
Yes, I mean everything.
She adores her big sister and watches every move she makes. She laughs at her and loves to grab her when Miss is within reach. Many times I’ve heard Miss saying that Lass is “pulling [her] hair out” when Miss tries to hug her and Lass gets a good grip on her hair.
She has gotten her first two teeth in the past couple of weeks, the middle two on the bottom.
She seems to really love feeling these new additions with her tongue.

She’s getting really good at sitting up on her own, though she does still topple over from time to time.



She’s mobile in every direction but forward at this point. She rolls all over and can push up and scoot backwards pretty easily.

As I’ve already posted, she started solids just this past week. Avocado to start, and now sweet potatoes. She’s done great with both of them. And yes, she did actually seem to like the avocado after the first day. I know some people may think me cruel to give my child plain avocado as her first taste of food other than breastmilk, but here’s why it’s my choice. 1) it’s packed with great nutrition!!! 2) it’s easy to mash up and serve fresh 3) it’s bland, easy to digest, and not a food that is likely to cause an allergic reaction. And if that’s not enough and you still think I’m mean because plain avocado isn’t the most delicious food out there (I know, I agree it’s not), let me point out that it’s at least no worse than the taste of jarred baby food (yes, I have tasted it).

That said, she does seem to prefer the sweet potatoes 🙂

And finally, I can once again say that she is a good sleeper (she was sleeping 12 hours through the night at 2 months, but hasn’t done that since 3 months).
Since returning from our travels last weekend I have transitioned her from napping in her swing to napping in her crib and have cut out her night time feedings. Last night was the first night that she slept through the night without eating. She did wake a couple of times but was able to soothe herself back to sleep, so I am very happy with the progress we have made since coming home. I again used the Ferber method, which was so successful for us in improving Miss’s sleep about a year and a half ago (I blogged about our first experience with it and you can find the book reference here).
We had her 6-month well-baby appointment today. She is now 17.9 lbs and about 26 inches long (both measurements around the 80th %ile). She’s on track with all her milestones and got three shots (two regularly scheduled and a flu shot) plus the last dose of her rotavirus vaccine drink thing. She’s growing and developing and changing just as she should be. And I’m enjoying every minute of it. I’m trying to savor every smile and snuggle and create mental snapshots every time she looks at me and I know she knows I’m her momma. I am loving 6 months.

Well, I Did Say She’s a Monkey. . .

Posted on by Amy
Guess who came running down the hall this morning while I was still in bed and her Daddy was still getting ready for work yelling, “I just get out my Blankie!”??




Yes. My little monkey finally climbed out of her crib this morning. Which meant I spent the day frantically obtaining all the needed items to make her crib into a big-girl bed by bedtime. See, I have been in serious denial that this day would ever come. If I could have, I would have kept her in her crib until age 16. I’ve had this huge fear of “The Big-Girl-Bed Transition,” thinking that it would lead to lots of problems getting her to stay in bed and go to sleep, or issues with her waking up at night, or some such other nonsense. So I have avoided any steps toward making The Transition. And although I have occasionally thought, “Maybe I should get the conversion rails for her crib and some guard rails so we’ll be ready when we need to transition her to a full-size bed” I have never actually gotten my rear in gear and gotten these items. I didn’t want to think I would need them soon. So this morning found me anxiously awaiting 9 am to call the children’s furniture store where we bought her crib, hoping that they would have everything I needed in stock so the transition would be smooth. They didn’t have the right color rails, but the guy at the store sold me what they had and ordered the right color and told me I could just exchange these for the correctly colored ones when they come in. Nice, right??
After naps (she napped in her crib, BTW, without any attempt to climb out again) we went shopping for “big-girl sheets,” and a waterproof mattress pad and a new pillow. We found some cute sheets and I let Miss choose between a new fluffy bird pillow and an owl pillow to match the sheets (she chose the owl). We read a new book about a big-girl bed several times today and generally made a big deal about it all day. She observed almost the whole production of putting her big-girl bed together. All the while we were telling her about Daddy putting her big-girl bed together so she can sleep on it and so on. She “helped” me put the new sheets on and of course we put her Bear and Elmo and Blankie in the bed too. I didn’t put any other bedding on other than sheets and her Blankie. I figured she had enough to get used to for right now, and she still flips and moves all around in bed so having lots of blankets on would just turn into a mess. And I actually ditched the pillow I bought and substituted a small toddler-size pillow my grandma made for her instead. I wanted her to have a pillow, but the one I bought today was just too big. And she loves the little embroidered pillow from Great-Grandma, so into the bed it went. She thought the new big-bed was pretty cool.




And, as is so often the case with my mommy-worries, my worst fears about this transition did not come to fruition. At least for now, she is peacefully sleeping in her big-girl bed, where she went to bed without any issues or struggles or climbing out or anything else. And thank goodness for the video monitor, which will hopefully help me to sleep peacefully tonight as well. Fingers crossed. . .

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Posted on by Amy
We love Dr. Seuss. Our favorite Dr. S books in our house are “Dr. Seuss’s ABCs,” “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket,” and “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?” Today our local library had a birthday party for Dr. Seuss, complete with cake,


storytime,

We had a few moments of down time when the story teller had to go fix a problem with one of her props, so we got some silly photos with my new phone. Notice Lass conked out in the Ergo.


Cat in the Hat pictures to color,

making new friends,

books to check out and bring home,
and a Cat in the Hat party favor.



I have to say, I was a bit disappointed in the storytime, as the story teller only read one book (a Dr. Seuss book called “Ten Apples??”) and the rest of the time performed a couple of other story-type things that had nothing to do with Dr. Seuss. And there were tons of kids sitting right up front who kept standing up and/or talking loudly and/or yelling, so the story teller kept interrupting what she was doing to redirect these kids, and not once did a parent come up to attempt to corral her own child’s behavior. Call me a stick in the mud, but I sat on the floor with Miss and Lass to make sure Miss behaved well. I’m all for letting her have fun, but not if it disrupts other’s ability to enjoy the show. She did a great job, by the way. And we did have a wonderful time even if the story time left something to be desired, in my humble opinion. Miss loves the library, so we’ll be attending story time more regularly in the future (the story teller today was a guest, not one of the regular children’s librarians). Happy 107th Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Two-Year (Really??) “Miss”-cellany

Posted on by Amy
I did a short post on Miss’s birthday. Now I have some time to write about what my big girl is doing at two.

She is such a funny little girl. She’s very active and curious. She is starting to get into pretend play more and more. She’s enjoying dress up, taking care of her dolls, cooking in her kitchen, etc.
Here’s she giving her doll a bath. The other day she was “feeding” her Elmo doll, by holding him up to her chest as if nursing him. She cuddles and bounces and “burps” her dolls, and I see her rocking and shushing them. She’s such a good little mommy.

She’s also an active little monkey. She loves to climb and romp. She can jump with two feet, balance briefly on one foot, and kick a ball. She likes spinning around, or being spun around, to get dizzy. She also has quite good balance. Today her fun new thing was “I wanna stand on Mommy’s back.” She managed to balance very well up there.
Yes, she’s holding my hair here to get herself steady.

After she mastered balancing on my back, she thought it was very funny to jump up, straddle my back, and drop down on her rear end onto me. Yeah. Ha. Ha.
She loves music and dancing, but you knew that already. . . She is in gymnastics and music classes, each once per week. She sings a lot now. Sometimes she busts out singing all the words to songs that I can’t believe she even knows. Like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Rock-a-Bye Baby.” She knows these songs even though I’m pretty sure I’ve only sung them to her a couple of times. The other day she started reciting “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” word for word while we were driving in the car, except she didn’t get the counting down quite right. It was adorable, by the way.

She loves reading and can recite many of her books, almost in their entirety. “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” is one she can pretty much “read” herself.
Her language amazes me more and more every day in how rapidly it is improving. She nearly always speaks in complete sentences now. She sometimes busts out with the funniest and cutest things too. “It’s pretty windy today, Baba,” or “Don’t worry Mommy,” or “Just be patient Lass” (when Lass started fussing to eat and it took me a minute to get to her). When she says “no” to something, she often likes to give a reason. Like, “Miss, would you like a snack?” she’ll say, “No, I too tired” (which sounds like “toy-ed”) or “Let’s put your socks on” she’ll say, “No, it’s too little.” Too tired and too little are her her standard responses these days.
The other day she was rubbing Lass’s hair and she noted that it was soft. She then commented that her own hair is soft as well. I asked her about Mommy’s hair, and she agreed that my hair is soft too. Then I asked her about Daddy, and she said, “No, Daddy’s pokey!” She can repeat nearly anything that is said to her or within her hearing. She is really into identifying people by name. Today she pointed to herself and said her name, then pointed to Lass and did the same, and pointed at me and said “Mommy.” Then she said, “That’s my family.” After Daddy came home from work this evening she correctly listed all four of the members of her family. She is getting a little better at using the correct pronouns, though she still makes mistakes with this quite a bit. She knows all of her letters and the sounds they make. She is starting to be able to identify what letter a word starts with by sounding it out. She knows all of her colors and shapes. Seriously, I am amazed by the capacity of her two-year-old learning every day.
She loves to do crafts. Coloring, painting, gluing, etc.




Of course anything that she can manipulate with her hands is fun. Play-Doh squishing is a joy for her.



She is pretty good with her spoon and fork now, though she often chooses not to bother with them. She eats very well most of the time and is a pretty adventurous eater. She has always eaten dinner at the table with us and pretty much eats what we eat.


She loves her sister. She likes to get down on the floor near her and give lots of kisses and hugs. She calls her “Sis” and gets very excited when Lass “talks” to or smiles at her. She tells her that she loves her, which just makes me want to press the pause button and savor such moments with my littles.
I know I say this every time I do one of these posts, but I really love this age. Miss’s personality is really emerging and I am enjoying her so much. She’s smart and funny and sweet. She gives hugs and kisses freely and often without prompting. I’m so blessed to be able to watch her grow every day.
And in case you were wondering, Lass is 6 months old, and I’ll do a post to update on her achievements very soon!

Guacamole Recipe

Posted on by Amy
Day two of avocado went better than day one (these photos are still from day 1 though)

No shuddering.
No grimacing.
Lass seemed to enjoy the green stuff, and she’s getting the hang of this eating thing.

When I bought an avocado for Lass at the grocery store yesterday, I picked up a few extra to make guacamole. I never used to like guacamole until I started making it myself with fresh ingredients. Here’s the recipe I’ve adjusted over the past few years.
Guacamole
3 avocados, mashed with a fork
2-3 scallions, minced
2 garlic cloves, pressed through garlic press
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
2 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro
1 tsp Kosher salt
Mix all ingredients. Enjoy. All the ingredient amounts are adjustable to your taste. I like lots of lime and cilantro in my guacamole, but you could use a bit less, for example. If you have any left over that you’re storing in the fridge, put it in a container with an airtight lid, but put on some plastic wrap pressed down right onto the guac before sealing the lid to help minimize the avocado turning brown.
We don’t eat chips much in our house, but this is great added to tacos or burritos or as a dip for fresh veggies. Tonight we had it with enchiladas suizas (sauce made with tomatillos, poblano peppers, and a bit of sour cream rather than lots of cheese and cream). Yum.

Big Fat Vacation Post

Posted on by Amy

We came home to heavily falling snow yesterday. After a week of sunshine and warmth, we are now back to over a foot of snow and temps below 20 degrees. But we had a splendid time. Now there’s a word I don’t use often enough. Splendid. Our vacation was truly splendid. It was full of everything a vacation should be. Lots of time with family. Cherished moments for my girls to spend with my grandparents, their grandparents (both my parents and my husband’s), and my aunt and uncle.




Four generations here.



And in addition to the fantastic family time, we had all the elements of the perfect vacation.
Bubbles.

Sweaty, sunscreened skin and hair curled by humidity.
Dancing and funny faces in a could-have-been-made-for-my-toddler mirror.





The beach of course, complete with shelling, relaxing, sand play, checking out the surf (Miss would not get too near the water, and kind of freaked out the one time a wave did come up over her toes), bird watching, a picnic lunch, and a nap for our littlest, experiencing her first trip to the beach.













A fun visit with close friends. Two of my good friends from graduate school live about an hour south of my in-law’s house, so I was able to visit with them and let them see the girls.

Morning walks, during which we got to walk by the harbor and see the manatees. Miss got so excited to see them poking their noses up out of the water. Okay, I got really excited to see them too, as I had never seen a manatee in person before.
Here we’re getting ready to go.
And of course, pool time.

This was our second dip in the pool for the week. Somehow we did not get any photos the first time. And unfortunately the pool heater got turned off by accident, so the water was a bit too cold for our second swimming attempt. But Miss really wanted to go in the pool, so her daddy got into the cold water and took her swimming. Reluctantly. . .
Sort of.


This dip in the pool only lasted a few minutes before we coaxed a blue-lipped, teeth-chattering Miss to get dry and blow bubbles instead of swimming.
In the evenings we had some grown up time playing cards with my in-laws. My husband and I taught them to play Euchre. I haven’t played Euchre since graduate school, and I forgot how much I enjoy it.
It was a great vacation. I almost didn’t want to come home. But now we’re here and I’m glad. We’re snuggled in and refreshed to get through the last of the cold weather. We’re looking forward to spring here. I can’t wait to see the crocuses pop up and feel the warm sun bringing everything back to life. I can’t wait to get my girls out and playing in the yard, going to the park and for walks in our new double stroller. Big things to come. Potty training. And this:
That’s avocado.
She seemed to like it at first.
And then maybe not so much.
Not sure if it was the taste or texture she was shuddering about.
We’ll try again tomorrow!

Family Fun in Florida

Posted on by Amy

We’ve had a wonderful weekend. Yesterday was full of traveling, beginning at 5am, but we were able to pack in a visit to my Grandpa C and then get to my Grandma B’s house for dinner. Lass got to meet her Great-Grandpa.


Miss got to show off for her Great-Grandpa, counting and dancing and playing. I could not get her to say “Arrivederci” though. My Grandpa always ends a phone call with, “As they say in the homeland, arrivederci!” and we have been working on it for weeks. She says, “Ayovechi.” But of course she got shy when we tried to get her to say it for him and she wouldn’t do it. It was so great to see him and spend some time visiting though.
We got to my Grandma B’s house last night. My parents are also here visiting my Grandma (and my mom was at my Grandpa’s when we got there yesterday). Today Miss had a big day playing with family. My mom, ever the children’s librarian, has held storytime several times today.

Great-Grammy has made paper doll chains for Miss over and over.
Miss loved them, but kept pulling them apart and then dismembering the dolls. I managed to save the last set my Grandma made for her. I put them away so I can put them in Miss’s baby book for her.
My Grandma is a wonderful musician, and at her house there is always music. Miss loved playing the piano.

She also had a lot of fun with this very old ukulele, which I remember from when I was little.
Then we checked out some quilts my Grandma is making. Miss kept asking to “wrap up” in the quilt tops my Grandma is working on, but was very happy with this old quilt instead. This quilt was pieced by my great grandmother, and then finished by my Grandma. Miss loved playing in it.
It was perfect for playing some hide and seek.
Peek!!
She enjoyed playing with the many golf balls my Grandma has around, which made for an interesting experiment with her shirt.
31 golf balls was the breaking point where her shirt came untucked and they spilled all over the floor. She thought that was pretty funny.
Here’s a shout out to one of my most faithful readers!!
Snuggles with Grandma.

Lass loves sucking on her bottom lip. Her first tooth broke through today, the left-middle bottom tooth.
Miss spent some time hanging out with my dad, surfing the web. Here they were looking at this blog.
She was really enjoying wearing her sunglasses at night, but as she was looking at photos from her birthday post, she realized she needed some more accessories.

She finished up the evening singing a fun new song she learned from my aunt.
She kept begging my aunt to sing this funny little song with her. It’s about chewing gum. She doesn’t even know what chewing gum is, but this is definitely her new favorite song. So. Fun.
P.S. Happy Birthday to my brother and my brother-in-law!!