kim through
   the looking glass

Dada, hi, bye-bye, and apple to our list of words.

MISSING:

Infant. Named Gwen. All I have is this toddler …

And I’m not sure where she came from …

I know, I know. It’s been a LOOOOOONG time since I’ve gotten to update you all on Gwen via pictures. Since the beginning of July, actually! I totally lost my camera cord and couldn’t even find the memory card/USB reader we bought a couple of years ago so I could NOT get my pictures off my camera! But, thankfully, I found both the card reader AND the camera cord and now we’re up and running again. I figured I’d shoot some pics up here and show you how much she’s grown in the past month! Read the rest of this entry »

We have gone from a one-word vocabulary (mama) to a four-word vocabulary in two days. While I was at my parents, Gwen learned to say berries (bays), ball (bah), and eyes (ice).

So. Cute. Can’t. Take. It.

I read about kids starting to use items for their intended use around Gwen’s age and thought “Aw, how cute!”

Awwww, how cute!

Um yeah. Ridiculously cute! This is Gwen yesterday using the TV remote as a phone. We gave her the real cordless phone and she threw it on the ground. Apparently she doesn’t think it’s a real phone like the remote is!

Gwen started grabbing the comb out of my hand and rubbing it on her own head a couple of weeks ago and I realized just how crazy important that milestone really is. My kid now understands that a comb is for brushing hair! Wow! That’s a pretty big leap from the ‘what’s that spiky black thing and why are you rubbing it on my head?’ look she’s been giving me since birth …

The cutest yet? This morning while I was brushing my teeth, Gwen was holding her foot in one hand and a shoe in the other, trying to get her foot in the shoe.

(Is it bad that the thought after ‘Heehee - she’s trying to put her shoe on!’ was ‘oh crap, now she’s going to want to do it herself and the TANTRUMS, OH THE TANTRUMS!’)

I’ll try

So, last week, Gwen turned 9 months old! 9 months!! That means she has been outside of me for longer than she was in my womb. That’s just craziness.

Our little miss is pulling up on everything in sight and trying to climb.

She has become a VERY proficient crawler and frequently finds the grossest things on the floor to put in her mouth!

She’s been babbling a tonne in the past week and has also learned to sign ‘milk’!

She’s into EVERYTHING in a flash - learning about gravity, how things feel, taste, sound …

… and leaving NOTHING IN HER PATH UNTURNED! One of our nicknames for her is ‘Gwenzilla’.

This stage of development is so fun! She’s a treat to watch and play with as she babbles away (”ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-pth”) and climbs all over you. Gwen LOVES books. She loves being read to, just looking at the pictures, and playing with books on the ground. If you put her down, she beelines for any book that might be sitting out. We need MORE BOARD BOOKS, PEOPLE!

Sleeping has been … difficult lately, although the past few nights have been wonderful and we’re hoping that we’re over the hump. For the past month, Gwen had been resisting bedtime (we’d lay her down and she’d push up to a sit and then pull up in her crib) and waking VERY frequently (on the order of 8-10 times a night). She wasn’t waking due to hunger, but she was waking nonetheless. Then, she stopped waking as much, but then was waking up for hours at night wanting to play. Either variation is not pleasant! For the past two nights, though, she has gone down between 8-9 (we’ve been trying to keep her awake a bit longer to get her practicing in BEFORE bed time!) and gone 7 hours without eating and only waking 1-2 times to be resettled before that one feed. Then she’s been going back to sleep and sleeping until she’s ready to be up for the day - around 7:15. It’s been a lovely few nights, and we’re hoping that maybe she’s through her need-to-wake-up-and-practice-all-my-mad-skillz stage.

I have totally been slacking at taking the pictures off my camera and updating le blog and le Facebook with pictures of my beautiful little girl. Maybe it’s because every moment she’s awake I’m ripping my laptop cord out of her mouth if I dare to open it up regardless of HOW FAR AWAY FROM IT I put her, or maybe it’s that I’ve been really tired lately and I just haven’t wanted to take the effort.

Either option is sad. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t have a topic that I specifically want to blog on, so I thought I’d throw a random smattering of stuff out there.

• On the right, you’ll see a new widget - the ‘Ideal Bite’ widget, and to be more precise, the ‘Mama Bite’ edition. I had signed up for these daily tips for green living a while ago and was loving getting them! Lately, though, I’ve realized that I already am aware of most of the tips/advice, so I unsubscribed, but thought I could continue to support them by helping my readers get some tips.
• I’ve finally mastered the art of wearing Gwen on the front in my woven wrap. I’m currently using the front wrap cross and LOVE IT. Since Gwen’s about 15 lbs now, she’s getting too heavy for my sling, but it’s quite comfy to wrap her on! Now I’m trying to work on back carries …
• I’m an aunt for the second time! Brad’s sister had a baby on February 4th - they are both (to our knowledge) doing well.
• I’ve finally joined Ravelry! So far, I’ve input most of my stash and needles and have picked out my next pattern for some new socks. I’m almost done the sock I’m working on now.
• I’m thinking of selling off my wool covers. Although they fit Gwen quite well as a newborn, this next size is just not working for us. Right now, we’re using two little g pants, a Kushies cover, and a Bummis cover. I’ve got an order in for a few more little g’s.
• I’ve been working on my wedding scrapbook lately - digitally - and it’s been lots of fun to go through our pictures and re-live that day! I can’t decide whether to make just a picture book or to do some journalling … any suggestions?
• Gwen has been sleeping GREAT lately!! She’s been taking two good naps - around 1 - 2 hours apiece AND she’s only waking twice during the night - once around 10 or 11pm and then again around 2 or 3am. The only downside to this good sleep is that she’s waking for the day between 6:15 and 6:30am. That’s just cruel (she used to wake up around 8:30am!).
• On of my very good friends is very close to having a new baby … I’m so excited to meet him! I made her a dinner last night and need to take it over to her house this weekend for her freezer.
• Facebook is irritating. Why doesn’t it ever work correctly?
• I have been totally slacking in the picture department lately! I’ve got tonnes of pics of Gwen and lots of videos, but I haven’t taken them off my camera yet.
• The cord on my laptop is dying. It needs some serious electrical tape and Brad and I are thinking seriously of doing a full back-up of all my files in preparation for the day that my laptop will be on it’s way to computer heaven. You can’t buy a new power cord for Macs, so once it’s done, it’s done. Not quite sure what we’re going to do when the lappy dies. I’m hoping I can get a new one, but yeah. That’s money.
• My mommy just called and she’s coming to visit today! YAY!
• I totally fell off the push-up and sit-up wagon. I did the first week and was loving it. And then yeah. I’m thinking I’m going to re-start week one this coming week since Brad wants to do the challenge too. This way, we can suffer together

Oatmeal Face!

Mistress Mouse seems to be feeling better - yesterday she was awake 3+ hours in between her naps and she took a 1.5 hour nap on her own in the afternoon!! I don’t know why, but it appears that when she’s not feeling so good she actually sleeps LESS than normal.

I’ve been re-reading parts of Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s book, Raising Your Spirited Child. It’s been good for me - mostly because the first time I read it, Gwen was only a few months old and although I knew she was going to be ’spirited’, I couldn’t yet identify many of the temperamental traits that made her spirited. On the second read-through, I’ve identified:

• Intensity - my favourite description of this is, “a living staircase of emotion, up one minute, down the next,” (Kurcinka, 2006, p. 41). Um yeah. That about does it.
• Sensitivity - “has to have quiet to sleep,” “a selective eater,” “acts out your stress,” (Kurcinka, 2006, p. 45).
• Regularity - “never falls asleep at the same time,” “is hungry at different times each day,” (Kurcinka, 2006, p. 55). Gwen, Gwen, Gwen.
• Energy - anyone who has ever watched Gwen or held her will know that this is one of her traits … she is NEVER still.
• First Reaction - “Rejects at first or watches before joining in,” (Kurcinka, 2006, p. 57). Now, it depends on the activity, but generally speaking, she’s a watcher. Or she joins in and then decides she’s not ready yet and wants to snuggle for a while before joining in again.

There’s a few temperamental traits that I’m not sure about - adaptability, persistence, mood, and perceptiveness - mostly because she can’t yet communicate enough to be sure.

Bath Time!

Either way, I’m finding the book to be helpful in helping me to name the traits that she’s exhibiting and find new ways of labeling them - for example, instead of ‘dramatic’, say ‘expressive’; instead of ‘emotional’, say ’sensitive’. It’s been good for me to learn how Gwen might think and, especially, how she is probably feeling inside during different situations. For example, it’s helpful for me to know that if she is prone to having a negative first reaction, she is actually, physically experiencing a racing heart, dilated pupils, rising blood pressure, and tense vocal cords and that it is a physical reaction tied to her genetic make-up (Kurcinka, 2006).

Look at me!

And seriously. How cute is this kid? Even though sometimes her reactions drive me a bit batty, she’s the sweetest, most curious, happiest baby for the most part. I couldn’t imagine my life without her now that she’s here and I’m loving getting to know this little person!!

Pardon my lack of blogging. It’s been a crazy week! Mostly it’s been a difficult week.

Gwen has been teething and sick since Monday (well, teething for two weeks, sick since Monday). Runny nose, cough, fever … yesterday she was pretty lethargic, so we decided to take her in to the walk-in clinic. Turns out it’s a viral infection, so there’s nothing anyone can do. I’ve been holding her for naps and giving lots of extra cuddles, not that she’ll let me do any less And her second tooth is *just* popping through now. Poor girl.

Last night I went out fr my first official ‘night out’. A bunch of moms from my church got together at Kelsey’s! I enjoyed a margarita and a burger. It was great to go out with some people in the same stage of life … we talked a lot about our labours and births, cloth diapering, babies, pregnancy, and parenting and we talked a little bit about work, school, and other miscellaneous subjects.

Mmmm, margarita.

That’s right. It happened.

Gwen Can Crawl!!! from Kim Schell on Vimeo.