Our morning of fun.....

This is the calming down of a full on tantrum we had this morning....

I somehow managed to get her in the car and she was fine the rest of the morning. I didn't dare put on her boots or hat though (common items of detest), and we listened to some "baby einstein classical music" in the car to relax.

Bye Bye....

It's the end of an era. Paige's final bottle of the day is gone. It's actually kind of sad, as I knew it would be. I think we held on to it more for our sake than hers. I managed to take out her nap time bottle a few months ago, in favour of just reading more books. Recently at night we have tried to focus more on book reading as well, and have decreased the bottle. Last night we didn't even offer her the bottle and she went to sleep no problem. When I saw the doctor yesterday she reiterated that she should be off bottles, so that was the impetus to get rid of the last of them. The timing couldn't be better though since she suddenly likes cold milk at meals.

So it's sort of sad not to hold her in the dark and feed her that last bottle (well, for Mike I think, I rarely put her to bed unless he isn't home). BUT, without them taking up room in the cupboard I have to admit I'm happy to clean that cupboard and use the space.

The next challenge: Get rid of the "num nums". That will be HUGE! Those are here to stay for now! Luckily she only has them at night. We tell her they are for sleeping babies. Then she occasionally sees a kid with one and yells "NUM NUM!!" She probably gets confused by this.

Stats

Paige went to the doctor today for her 18 month appointment. She's still coasting along in the 25th percentile with these stats:

Height: 30.7"
Weight: 23 lbs
Head circumference: 46 cm (too bad I don't have this measurement from any other visit)

She had 2 needles, one in each arm. She didn't cry at all for either of them. Like didn't even care the slightest. When they put the bandaids on her, I think she thought they were stickers (which she is obsessed with), and then they put real stickers on top of the bandaids. I then put another sticker on her hand to distract her. "Bye bye!" she says as we leave the room. The nurses were all laughing at how cute/good she was. The next needles aren't until age 4.

Ba-bahm-bahm....

Obama aka "ba-bahm-bahm"

Repeat.

Today I heard Paige say "Oh shoot" twice. Good thing I'm not one to swear....

Little sickies

Paige's friends are sick, so when she suddenly got a fever we assumed she was also sick. This is yet to be determined. She seems to be teething as well, which can cause a fever, so who knows. Friday was spent with Paige napping, lying on the couch, and then sitting with me and watching american idol, and some disney show. She just wanted to be held. She was better yesterday, but seemed a bit warm for an hour or so. She has also been waking up at night quite frequently. I took the bumper pads out of her bed since she was ripping them off before her nap. It was silly to keep taking them off and putting them back on. But since then she has been waking up when her soothers fall out, or when her head hits the side. Remember I put them in her crib in the first place to avoid all of those problems? Since it has been about 10 months since those things went in, I wasn't sure if she needed them any more, but clearly she does. I am hesitant to put them back in though since she needs to learn to problem solve by herself...like move herself away from the side, snuggle under her blankets, etc. Now she just cries until I come in to fix her problem. Until she can do these things, though, I think we're looking at some long nights. Last night she was up 4 times. And she never wakes up in the night normally. I might put them back in to get some sleep tonight. Mike and I are getting sick too, so sleep would be good.

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I have been trying to finish Paige's scrapbook, but I have realized I'm more into blogging and picture taking than scrapbooking. In my scrapbooking magazine I see such lovely pages that I can't even come close to producing. And scrapbooking is expensive if you're not going to really put in 100% effort. I'm still only at "getting the baby room ready" stage in my book. I think it is easier to scrapbook vacation pictures--there's less pressure.

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Paige and Dora: I just wanted to point out that although Paige really likes Dora, by no means does she sit in front of the tv all day. Every day she will watch 1 or sometimes 2 episodes of Dora, and no other tv. So that's only 30 mins average. I thought I would mention this since there seems to be a lot of articles lately about television watching and babies. In the 1 article it says that some babies spend 40% of their day watching tv!!?? I guess if the parents watch tv while the baby was present. I used to do this when Paige was younger--partially watch something while playing with her. Even if I wanted to do this now she wouldn't let me--"No people?" she says if I turn the tv on. Now we just listen to the music channels...mix it up a bit...little treehouse, little classical, whatever kind of mood we're in. I don't think she likes seeing real people talk to the camera. Only when she wasn't feeling good the other day did she want to just veg in front of American Idol. Since we get our Dora from the "On Demand" feature on our tv, it's the same 15 or so episodes. Now Paige can name a couple of her favourites. She asks for the "mambo" or "star pocket" episodes. And she yelled out her first word in Spanish yesterday when Dora told her to...whatever the word for "jump" is (salta??)

Oh--another thing from the article I read was that there is a channel called "baby tv" (!!??--brutal)

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So embarrasing.....I have been getting an extreme eye twitch lately, and I can't even feel it. This means I could be anywhere and my eye is twitching out of control and I DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT!! This used to happen when I was at work and I was stressed. I'm not stressed, am I?? I don't think so...maybe about this scrapbooking....

the railing....

This evening Paige discovered that she could throw things through the railing upstairs and watch them fall downstairs. I have to admit I can't believe she hasn't done this before. As I was getting her bottle ready I heard *smash* "uh oh", *smash* "uh oh", *smash* "uh oh". Uh oh? ya right! Luckily she did it right at the end of the day before bed, so.... maybe she will forget about it tomorrow.

strolling down the street in a 1980's sled...

This morning we had a ton of snow so Katharine came over via walking with Amy in her sled. When they were leaving Paige watched Amy happily be dragged away in her sled. Paige was smiling and looking envious so I asked her if she would like to go in her sled. She agreed. After lunch I brought up my old baby sled and pulled her around our crescent twice. "Gen?" she asked, so we went around again. "Gen?" she asked, and around we went a fourth time. "Gen?"--but this time it was getting late, so I let her sit in the sled while I shovelled for the second time.

This is a big improvement on last year's unenthusiastic sledding attempt:

If I can figure it out, I might try to recover the pink cushion, it looks really worn.

McLaren post-Christmas Christmas....

We got together with "my side" of the family on New Years day for our Christmas gift exchange and dinner. Yum yum!!

Paige was thrilled with her new Dora Chair, baby, and baby stroller (don't blow up the picture of her with the stroller--her face is filthy!!!) She played with these all day long today. We haven't tried it yet, but the new baby is the same brand as her other baby (corolle), but is a "tidoo" which means it can go in the bath. We'll try this out tomorrow, but at night so she dries by morning in case she needs to be strolled around all day again.

Here's a picture from New Years Eve. When I was vacuuming she picked up her vacuum and helped.

On New Years Even we had Katharine, Craig, Amy, Christy, and Clara over for dinner. Paige went to bed and the other 2 girls stayed up late late late!!

Our time out West (or was it the Arctic??)

Even though it was freezing it St. Albert, we still had a great time visiting with everyone over Christmas. Paige got a taste of what mommy and daddy dealt with while growing up. It was so cold that Paige barely complained about having her jacket/scarf/mitts and hat on while in the car. At home she cries and takes off her hat and mitts, and I have never put her scarf on in the car. Since it was so cold, we did a lot of our visiting inside Jen and James' house (where we stayed), and didn't leave very often. Here are a few pictures (out of order) of what we did:

Boxing day:

Christmas day at Auntie Judy and Uncle Greg's (I love how all the older kids are spinning and Paige is just taking it all in):

Jen and James at the Sobey's cafe:

Grandma Val and Paige on Christmas Eve:

Grandpa Jerry and Paige at Sobey's cafe:

Paige with her 2nd cousin (born only hours apart) on Christmas day watching the massive dog:

Paige and her beloved Abby. A blanket, dora cup, and a Dora video with your best friend? Who could ask for anything more? This was near the beginning of the trip when Paige hadn't quite begun to seriously annoy Abby yet...

At the Barr's house for a fabulous dinner and visit with Riley (wiley). More dog tormenting...

Paige and Uncle Tyson:

Sooo many pictures this trip, so I just selected a few to put up. One thing that I have to write down in the odd chance that I would forget this story and not remember to tell it to Paige in the future....ok...well basically I'm doing my hair or makeup or something and I hear Mike say "NO PAIGE WE DO NOT EAT DOG FOOD". Paige had shoved FIVE pieces of dog food in her mouth and one of them was all crunched up! Yuck! I grabbed her and brushed her teeth 3 times and washed her face and she still had dog food breath. Until your child has dog food breath you will never quite grasp how disgusting this is. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I made her eat more human food to try to mask the smell. This worked slightly, but as I was washing up some dishes I caught her with 2 more pieces! This was it, I had to pass her off to Auntie Jen to clean her up for the second time.

This probably all came about because we had let Paige feed Abby a few times. She used to feed Abby cookies, but realized that cookies were only given sometimes. She noticed that Abby's food was always sitting there, and well, why not feed it to her piece by piece. "Abbyabbyabbyabbyabby" she would yell, and then when Abby would take the piece "good girl" she would say. Then grab another piece and repeat. I guess this is how she got used to handling Abby's food. And well, if Abby eats it, why can't I?!

Our visit started off with Paige being fairly gentle towards Abby, but progressed to annoying Abby. Always in her face, touching her feet, poking and proding her. Abby was very good and never got mad, but you could tell she was irritated.

Having Abby around was great as Paige was always in great spirits first thing in the morning, and right after her nap. Before we went to St. Albert, Paige had begun to cry a lot after her naps for some reason.

Something else I don't have any pictures of is the $27 swimming extravaganza. Jen, James, and I took Paige to a swimming pool which was really quite a cool place but...seriously so expensive for swimming with a baby! It was fun for me to go with other people since I got a chance to swim around and go on a crazy slide on my own!

I also forgot my camera when we went to Andrea's house to visit with Emerson, Lisa, Natalya, and Cadence. Too bad we can't see each other more often since the babies are all within 7 months apart.

A couple of non-Paige related activities were the annual Christmas dinner at Janice's house, and Bridesmaid dress shopping with Janice.

Anyway, tons of fun over Christmas, sad to come home, but a great trip over all (.....minus the dental surgery to be completed on Monday)