2 more things!

If I had only waited a few hours before posting this morning, I realized 2 more things Paige can do.

1. Backwards crawling (to get away from something--in this case--the vacuum)
2. Can climb onto low objects (I had her mattress on the floor as I was changing her crib height, and she climbed on top of the mattress crawled across it and then fell off at the other end since she wasn't sure how to get off--cried at this--woops)

New things she loves/is fascinated by:

1. bathrooms
2. the new baby gate/looking through the railing to the foyer
3. extension cords
4. vents (especially if they are in the bathroom)
5. books
6. diapers

Paige is hilarious

I think if you click on this picture and view it in extra large you will be able to see her bottom 2 teeth. I have been unable to get a picture of them.

Paige is making us laugh so much lately. You can just tell that she is so proud of herself for being able to stand up. She has been making this face lately that I have been unable to photograph either. She scrunches up her nose and opens her mouth to show her little teeth and breaths heavily out of her nose. (if you scrunch up your nose and breath out your nose you will see what I mean) She does the face a lot when she has pulled herself up. It seems to be her face she makes when she is really happy.

We have yet to move the crib down to the next level, but I am going to do it when I am done with this. This morning I was trying to get her to nap and just as I thought she might be close to sleeping, I went to check on her and there she was standing there with the scrunched up face. I took a picture of her:

So then I made her lay down and I repositioned the blankets. From underneath my hand she squirmed her way out and started creeping towards the side of the crib and stood up again! We finally had to go to the grocery store so that she would be able to sleep in her car seat. Her sleeping was bad again last night, and I think she is thinking about her new moves in the nighttime. Also, her voice sounds raspy, so she could also have a sore throat?

Paige also started "cruising" yesterday. She got up to hold onto the couch and she moved her way along to grab a newspaper a bunch of times. Then at night, she moved her way along to get her teddy bear and was even able to cruise from the couch onto a little table when I moved the bear over there. She is pretty slow and has a few accidents, but I bet in a few weeks she will be motoring!

Practice makes perfect!

Paige has been very interested, lately, in practising her walking skills. She is still so wobble-y but I think she sees it as entertainment. The crawling is becoming passe already. She is very clever and I can see her watching my legs if I do silly jumps in front of her to get her to laugh. She is trying to figure the whole thing out. Something she can do, (although I'm not sure if it is impressive or not--what do I know?), is walk forward when she is holding onto something. When she pulls herself to standing while holding onto something, obviously her legs are still far away from the object and her back is still arched as she is holding onto the object. She can then take a few steps forward on her own to be standing up straight. I thought that was pretty good, but like I said, what do I know? I think I need to get her one of those walkers. I was under the impression that all walkers were illegal, but it is just those death trap ones that the kid is confined in a seat where they can make their way over to the stairs when you're not looking. I guess they assume that if your kid is walking behind something you have already taken the neccessary precautions with the baby gate. You can bet I wouldn't let her out of my sight with one of those..I am always afraid of her falling when she is standing against anything. Oh--so basically, i mean one of those little push car things, or some sort of push animal or something for babies rather than toddlers.



I put her in her bouncy chair yesterday for the first time since, probably, Christmas? She was basically horizontal in it since she weighs so much. Also, on the back of the seat it says that once the baby can sit up unnassisted that they should not be in the seat anymore. I wasn't sure if that meant they could just sit on their own unnassisted, or if they could sit up (bring themselves to sitting) unnassisted? It was quite unclear, but I take it to mean that she should not be in it anymore since she can sit on her own, and if she is in the chair she can use the sides to pull herself up. If the toy bar is on though, there is no way she can get out, but oh well. It was not as fun for her as it used to be. But it was very interesting to watch how she interactred with the moving toys on the toy bar now. She used to just hit randomly at these toys that would make noise, and she would just watch these other 2 tiny animals that moved. Now she seems to understand cause and effect more and she would know how to make noise. She was also touching the smaller toys with her index finger, and playing with the toucan attached to a spring which she had never done. It is too bad that babies outgrow toys before they obviously get the full use out of them.


Today is day 1 of no coffee. We'll see if I make it till tomorrow. There are just so many days that it has made me feel gross, so I have subsituted it this morning with herbal tea. HA! We'll see what happens. I was hoping that just having a warm drink would help. We're going to Gymboree today, so we'll see how I feel there. I know I need to drink more water too, so if I do both of these things I should feel spectacular.

I just love this little pink sweater and jeans. She felt so grown up in it that she thought she would stay up till 10:00 last night.

Paige's crawling skills thus far...

Here is Paige crawling down the hall to go see the vacuum cleaner...

Another high chair sleep

Gnawing

Paige slept through the night last night! I have a feeling the sleeps are going to get a lot better now...knock on wood.

Speaking of wood, since Paige figured out how to stand at the bookshelf, she will crawl over to it, start to get up, but then stop short once she gets on her knees because the second shelf is at the same height as her mouth and she will start to gnaw on it and scrape her little teeth on it!!

I have to keep pulling her away and I say NO (what if she ingests some lead based paint or something??)

Today we are off to Gymboree. Should be good for her to get out to play somewhere different than our family room. She is going stir crazy.

The Paige Stands Alone!

Paige pulled herself up to standing yesterday. She crawled over to the bookself and slowly looked at the DVD's on the first shelf for a little while, and then one by one put her hands on the 2nd shelf. Then with shaky legs she slowly moved one leg at a time from being on her knees to putting her feet flat on the ground and standing up straight! So cute! She attempted to do it a bit later again, but had a minor fall and cry. I am sort of sad because I know that we should soon move her crib down to the next level. Her crib only has 2 levels, so this will be it. I like having her up high, it is nice to be able to just lay her down softly if she has fallen asleep while eating. Also, with her continual wakeups lately and soother plugs it is much easier to find her soother and drag her back to the center of the crib without having to drop the side of the crib and make a big fuss. Also, we change her clothes and her diaper in her crib right now which is a lot easier on the back than doing it on the floor. I guess we are supposed to take down the mobile in her crib too once she can pull herself to standing...also sad. She is becoming less and less of a baby.

well--one thing...she HATEs having her clothes changed and cries when we put her arms in sleeves, which is something she used to do when she was new. I wonder if some of her clothes are too small and she is traumatized by having her arms forced through sleeves.

I find that with this interupted sleep lately, that I am dreaming a lot more. I also find that I will have some boring dream, and then once I am up with Paige my mind finds it hard to think of anything but the boring dream, and I am unable to go back to sleep. Then, the next night, somehow my mind will dredge up the same stupid dream from the night before and think that I should be dreaming about it again. It's like one night of broken sleep rolls into the next. Although, the nights seem to be getting back to 2-3 wakeups now which is better than 6.

I weighed Paige the other day and she weighs 20 lbs. I found a percentile calculator online which says for her weight and age she would be in the 89th percentile!! She is getting quite substantial. You would think she would be smaller since her crawling is getting so quick!

No sleep for the sleep deprived

Paige is NOT sleeping. We had 2 weeks where she only woke up no more than once a night where we had to drag her from the side of the crib... usually around 5:00. Then she had 2 days in a row of sleeping straight through the night, and I thought, "this is IT!". Then after that, crap. She wakes up at least 5 times a night now. Always in the side of the crib, so obviously something is wrong and she is moving around more. God forbid she is teething again.

Paige's First Fear/Always wear a clean diaper, you never know what might happen.

Paige is scared of this whale.

She was sitting in her little bath yesterday (she can now sit up in it with the little seat attachment), and I had put some toys floating in the water for her to play with. I gave her a little starfish toy to hold, and I said look! I picked up this whale and submerged it under the water to suck up the water. She started shaking and was still clutching onto the little starfish with both hands. I thought maybe she was cold since she was sitting up in the water rather than lying down? Anyway, I then sprayed out the water from the whale and she went, "AHHHHHH" like a yell/scream all at the same time. So of course I waited a second and did it again just to see and she screamed and shook again! Poor little thing.

I then remembered that once before she was in the bath and she was freaking out. I wasn't in there the entire time, but Mike had her in there. We weren't sure what the problem was at the time... if she was tired, etc. But now looking back, Mike had taken out the whale! When I told him yesterday that she was scared of the whale he said, "Oh ya, she hates that thing". Hahaha He thinks that he may have sprayed her in the face with it last time.

I forgot to mention that Paige and I got stuck in the snow the other day. Well, I did mention it to some people, but I forgot to mention the details. We had been at Katharine's house for lunch with Christy and Clara also. When we went to leave Paige had a poopy diaper, but since we live 2 minutes away I decided to just wait till we got home. Anyway, as we were driving away, I got stuck in the snow at the end of the street. Christy was behind me and she got out to help with her shovel. We weren't able to get it unstuck, and by this point, Paige was going nuts. A garbage man stopped to help, but he quickly gave up and snuck away when we weren't looking!! Then Christy walked Paige back to Katharine's house. While Christy was walking Paige back, I could hear Clara going nuts in her car. Ahhh what a disaster. Anyway, 2 guys and 1 girl all came separately to help and got us unstuck. I then had to drive around the street back to Katharine's house to pick up Paige, where Katharine had been nice enough to change the poopy diaper. THE END.

A mother's proudest moment..

Can it be possible that I, who can barely sleep anywhere other than my bed, who spent the better part of 2 months in Europe as a sleep deprived wreck, could have a child that would fall asleep while she was being spoon fed in her high chair? I didn't think it possible! How cool and cute.