Category: D

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Hippity-hoppity

Easter’s on its way! And I’m so excited to fill an Easter basket and help the Easter Bunny set up an egg hunt for D this year, since she’ll be able to do it on her own this time. Last year she was too little and had to help Daddy hunt for his eggs. But this year it’ll be all her.

My mom got her a ridiculously cute bunny coat last Easter, and it still just fits for this one. The sleeves are getting a little too short, but we had to wear it this week to celebrate. It’s luxuriously soft and furry, with a pink satin lining, bunny ears, and a little cotton ball-esque bunny tail on the back hem. Get out of here!

Here she is modeling and showing yet again what a difference a year makes… (please pardon the crappy phone picture from this year, but she now insists on being able to see herself when you take her picture)

 

 

 

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Ode to daycare

Oh, our daycare, we do love it so.

D loves to constantly learn and play and grow.

She whines a little when we arrive,

But after hand washing she’s off to thrive.

 

Her days are filled with art and song,

And sometimes she acts like she’d rather stay there all night long.

The teachers in all of her rooms so far

Have been absolutely wonderful – right now she’s a Shining Star.

 

But there’s just one thing about which I need to complain.

And no, it’s not that today’s filled with rain.

You see this thing keeps happening;

This thing which does not make my heart sing.

 

Every couple weeks the tell-tale signs begin –

Coughing, sneezing, snot rivers down to D’s chin.

Her excellent sleep patterns are soon replaced

By this screaming monster whom I’d like to punch in the face.

 

Not one night has gone by this week

Where we haven’t awoken to her midnight shriek.

“No, not again, go back to sleep!” I silently pray.

For I know this will lead to yet another horrible day.

 

A double ear infection, pink eye, and yes, she’s on meds.

Unfortunately they haven’t yet helped to calm her nighttime head.

I, too, now feel the beginning of this damn stupid cold,

And these aches, pains, and bloodshot eyes are getting quite old.

 

So dear daycare, you’re the best, but give me a break!

I don’t know how much more sickness our little family can take.

Your kids are all cute, I’m not gonna lie.

But I’m now pretty certain they can all shoot biological-warfare grade snot straight out of their eye.

 

 

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The witching hour

I’ve heard a lot of parents lamenting that time of day when their kids tend to go a little more berserk than normal. It’s apparently usually late afternoon or early evening, and it always seems to happen around the time said parents are trying to get dinner made and on the table.

And I’ve always secretly heaved a sigh of relief that D doesn’t really have one. A witching hour, that is. She’s normally very cheery and playful when we get home from daycare, ready to eat soon after we arrive, then happy to play around in her toy area for most of the night until bedtime.

Bedtime can be another story, but when that happens it’s usually because she’s too tired and doesn’t want to trust me that she’s ready to sleep. Silly girl, still hasn’t learned that Mommy knows best, even when she screams otherwise.

Unfortunately, we seem to have discovered her witching hour this week, on the dawn of her 20 month birthday. And how lucky are we? It occurs at 2am. Whee!

The past 2 nights she has awoken in fits of howling right around that time. Did she hear a noise? Did she have a bad dream? Did she just want to rebel against the rest of our world who likes to SLEEP at that hour of night?

Now, she did start a cold on Sunday that has progressed over the past 2 days, so there is that aspect, but still. 2 nights in a row? That’s a little much, my dear. She might average waking once a week or so, but rarely on consecutive nights.

And last night was awful. The sleeping cough she almost always gets with her colds began, so I knew it was probably going to be a rough go. Little did I know that she would wake approximately 78 times between 2-4am. That was great fun.

Poor R is suffering through the adult version of D’s cold right now, and he even got up to help with her fits last night. We took turns, alternating shifts. He gave her some baby Tylenol at one point, but I’m not sure how much it helped. I was trying to magically plug my ears and pretend there was not a wailing child in the house.

So, all this to say, I’m tired. We got a brand new mattress set this weekend, and I’m now 0-2 on nights enjoying it. The thing is an absolute monster – king size pillow-top, and my feet don’t even touch the ground when I sit on the side of it! It’s taller than D now too, so she gets frustrated that she can’t pull herself up on it like she could on our old one.

I envisioned nights of sweet, cushioned, squeak-less slumber, but instead I’ve been greeted with incessant toddler screams and ghosts of pre-dawn terrors.

I do feel terrible for D – you can tell she’s uncomfortable and it took everything I had to wake her up this morning when it was time to get ready for school. But I really hope tonight is better.

Maybe this is payback for inwardly thanking my lucky stars that we don’t have that late-day witching hour. Because if I had to choose between 4pm and 2am, I’d happily say BRING IT ON 4PM!!

 

 

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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!