Month: March 2012

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Wherein I resort to humming

Last night D was in a mood at bedtime. You know which one. The I’m-so-sleepy-but-I-don’t-want-to-go-to-bed-so-I’m-just-going-to-cry mood.

It’s my favorite.

It was about 8:15, and she’d been displaying her usual signs of tiredness for awhile – rubbing her eyes, yawning, getting progressively more restless. So instead of even trying to get her to fall asleep on the couch with R, I carried her into her room to rock with the stars on.

That, apparently, was not how she intended to spend her evening.

She started crying before we even sat down in the chair, and proceeded to try to squirm her way out of my arms to freedom. Not so fast, young lady. I’m your mom and I know you’re tired.

So I just cradled her tightly and listened as her screams turned more into moans and little sobs. Ah ha, progress. I knew it!

She quickly stopped struggling, a sure sign that sleep was near, yet the little cries persisted. Ok, a new plan of attack must be in order.

What did I do? I started humming as her head rested against my chest. I thought the vibration might soothe her, reminding her of her time inside, even though that was so long ago now I’m sure she doesn’t remember it.

What did I hum, you ask? Well since I can’t sing for shit and needed something simple and fast, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” was the winner. Musical genius, right here.

After a couple renditions I tested the waters… Her whimpers started back up after a brief pause to catch my breath, so I continued.

Fortunately it only took a couple minutes more before her limbs went limp, her breathing slowed and deepened, the tell-tale little muscle jerks began, and her head hung lower and lower on my chest. Sleep was here.

So I guess I’m a pretty good hummer.

With my voice.

For my child to get to sleep.

Get your minds out of the gutter.

 

 

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And then there was a toddler in our bed

There must have been something in her milk Saturday night, because D ended up sleeping in our bed for the 1st time ever. We do NOT make this a habit, obviously, when she can’t sleep, and usually she will eventually go back to sleep in her crib after waking in the middle of the night.

But for whatever reason she just wasn’t having it Saturday night. Try as we may, she wouldn’t sleep more than about 10 minutes at a stretch back in her crib.

Feel my pain? Here’s an approximate timeline of how our evening went:

8:00-9:00  Trying to get D to settle down, put toys away, and get snuggled in for night-night. R and I were engrossed in Season 1 of Downton Abbey on Netflix, so we wanted her to nestle into the blankets on the couch with R and fall asleep, like she often does. She was restless.

9:00  D finally conked out in his lap, so he carried her into her crib.

9:00-11:00 R and I become addicted to Downton Abbey. Well, I’m addicted. He may have just been humoring me by watching all these, but I think he actually kinda likes it too.

11:00ish  D starts crying, so after it becomes clear she’s not just sleep crying R goes in to rock her back to sleep. I hear little cries coming from her room off and on.

11:15  R comes back out to the living room carrying D, who is still not back to sleep. He puts her in the blankets with him on the couch again, but she instantly pops back up and now wants to play after seeing a puppy on the tv. Wrong.

11:15-11:30  I take her back in her room to rock with her turtle projecting stars and moons on the ceiling, and she eventually goes back to sleep.

11:30ish  I go to bed.

11:45-12:30  D wakes up 2-3 times, each time I rock her back to sleep. Those “sleeps” last no more than 10 minutes each. I’m getting really tired.

12:30  R goes in to try to get her to sleep and says he’ll just go lie on the couch with her. I know he’ll end up having to spend the rest of the night out there with her if he does, so I say just bring her into our bed. Little did I know that was the beginning of the end of any hope for a restful night.

12:30-6:30  D sleeps between me and R. And coughs in my face all night long. R bails at some point before morning to take up residence on the couch. Lucky. At 6:24 I awaken to a small arm moving back and forth over my forehead, then a finger in my eye. Nice wake up call.

So yeah, that wasn’t the most brilliant solution, and I now know why we haven’t tried it before.

D took 2 naps yesterday for the 1st time in months.

 

 

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19 month stats

D turned 19 months old yesterday.

And I almost totally forgot about it!

I just kept thinking it was February, since that month seemed to last forever with its extra day this year and all, and then suddenly I realized it was March 1. 19 months!

I guess we now officially start saying her age in years instead of months? So she’s simply a year and a half old? Or would you continue saying 19 months?

Let’s see what’s new since her 18 month stats:

  • She has added “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” to her repertoire and loves to sing it whenever she’s in her “boats”. She’ll get in an empty cardboard box, usually with the 2 Moosh pillows we have for some reason, and rock back and forth all over the living room saying “row, row, row”. It sounds more like “woah, woah, woah,” but you totally know what she’s doing. So then when you start singing the song, she gets super excited, rocks even harder, and claps mightily at the end.
  • She recognizes that the little turtle in her room shines stars and moons on the ceiling when it’s dark, and she loves it. Now her new thing is to point up at the sky and wave her hand in a little circle, meaning she wants to see the stars. If I rock her to sleep that’s our new routine – watching the stars instead of reading a book.
  • She knows that airplanes fly up in the sky. Whether this is because she’s been on a lot of them recently and I always tell her we’re going on a big vroom-vroom in the sky, or whether they’ve learned about them at school, I’m not sure. But she takes her toy airplane and zooms it up above her head, just like the vroom-vrooms in the sky.
  • She loves to dance and sing and clap along to the alphabet song. My mom informed us that I knew my ABCs by the time I was a year and a half old, so now I guess we’d better get D rolling. They’ve obviously sung it at school, for as soon as you begin she knows exactly what you’re singing and joins in. I think it’ll be so fun once she actually knows the letters and can sing along with us.
  • She actually danced with me for the first time the other night. We were heading into the kitchen to eat her supper and I turned on the radio speaker in there. She grabbed both of my hands and started swaying back and forth. And then I had to mop up the puddle into which my heart had melted because I was so happy.
  • She’s still an excellent self-entertainer. She’ll happily sit in her play corner and scoot from toy to toy to book to book and back again for good chunks of time. She reads her books out loud and loves sitting in her chair. It’s the climbing from her chair to the couch that we need to work on stopping. Ahem.
  • She is ridiculously silly. Lately she’s taken to army crawling and scooting around the house, sometime pushing something with her, sometimes just on her own. Last night she was crawling around on her knees pushing her box boat from the living room, through the dining room, into the bedrooms, and back out again. I love watching how playful and goofy she is. She definitely loves to laugh. A girl after my own heart.
  • She loves to get down on the yoga mat with me when I do my push ups and sit ups at night. She’s done this for awhile now, but just the other night she actually grabbed the push up handles we have and used them exactly as they’re supposed to be. I was impressed. This girl’s gonna be ripped!
  • She’s learned to sign “please”, which thrills me. I’ve been trying to get her to do that forever. You know, teaching manners and all. Finally just recently she’s started doing it, and I love it. Combined with the “thank you”s again, this mama couldn’t be prouder.

This girl. I love her so!

 

 

 

 

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Happy anniversary to me!

Today marks 1 year exactly since my very 1st post on ScooterMarie. Now how do I go about celebrating that?

image source

I would have loved to show you screen shots from all the iterations of my blog design since last March, but unfortunately I was never trolled by archive.org so I can’t grab any of those for you. ‘Tis a shame, too, since this blog looks WAY different than it did when I 1st started.

It actually looks a lot different than it did just a few months ago. Damn you, Wayback Machine! Why didn’t you find me?

So hmm… What can I say about this 1 year milestone in the blogosphere?

I can honestly say it’s something I never really thought I’d do. For years, whenever I heard the word “blog” I just automatically assumed it meant a tech-based website that was going to be completely over my head in jargon. Not my bag.

Not once did I think this world was full of the humor, wit, class, emotion, ideas, and just all around sense of camaraderie that it has turned out to be. I think that’s the best part about this past year of blogging – all the wonderful blogs and people behind them that I have discovered.

People laugh when I say “My blogging friend so-and-so,” but it’s true. I genuinely consider all of you friends, all of you people who currently only live in the Internet for me, whom I haven’t yet met in real life.

But I still feel like I know you – I’ve read about your families, I’ve learned of your struggles, I’ve laughed at your stories, and I keep you in my reader for more. Now don’t you feel special!

But it’s true – I consider you girls (and guys!) my friends.

And I have a feeling that if (or hopefully when) we do meet in person someday, I will be proven correct. We will be friends.

Thank you all (both from the Internet and in real life) for coming to ScooterMarie and reading my words. It’s your comments and connections that make this so much fun.

So here’s to continued friendships through ScooterMarie. I love telling you our crazy stories, and I hope you’ll keep coming back for more.

1 year down, many to go…