The Business of Baby

What an amazing, marvelous and maddening age this is!

I don't know whether to laugh at her antics, be amazed by her intelligence or pull my hair out with the drama!

It been three months since I posted her milestones so this may be a really long post...bear with me while I just sit in awe and write about her.

Language development is amazing and she now converses very well. The past month or so she has made the leap to asking questions, as in "what is that sound?", "who is that?", "mamma - what is this?". It is so cute because on one hand she seems such a little "know it all" and then she will surprise me by asking a sweet innocent questions and I realize she is still a baby!!! 

She is really smart and know a lot of songs and nursery rhymes. Here are few she can say entirely on her own without prompting, in tune and are about 80-90% understandable which I think is pretty cool.
- Itsy bitsy spider
- Jack and Jill
- Hey Diddle diddle
- Twinkle Twinkle
- Wheels on the bus
- ABC
- Humpty Dumpety (sp?)
- Little Miss Muffet
- Little Jack Horner
- and many monkey songs which I don't know myself so don't know the titles.

The BEST is she knows and sings "Edelweiss" with me. I have always sung it to her since she was an infant and now when I sing it, she sings with me. Many nights before we sleep we will sing a duet...she has such a sweet voice and I am amazed how well she holds the tune and can say most of the words.

She continues to love books and is now at the age when she likes to follow the story. I am really enjoying this because rather than pointing to pictures I can read the text. We have books all over the house, including a mini-library near the bed.  Each night she picks two books for us to read. They vary based on her mood, but its fun to see what she will pick each night.

Food wise she is now eating pretty much anything and everything. She had a good appetite and enjoys her food. She continues to love fruit and cheese but will eat her veggies without much fuss.

Sleep is a whole other post - but mainly she is doing well. She can go many nights without asking for "more milky please".  I do think the longer daylight hours are causing her to sleep much later at night.  Last night she was up until almost 10pm...not tired or anything:-(  But that is rare, its more usual for her to sleep by 8:30pm and wake at 6:00am. Sometimes she will wake around 5am for milk and go back to sleep for a couple of hours. She does wake a couple of times for her binky or just talk in her sleep, last night it was hilarious she was saying "I want my make up!"....LOL, yes, you read that right!

She is still sleeping in my bed which is challenging because she kicks. So now I have a pillow between her and me. A few nights ago she asked me to bring her crib (now daybed) alongside my bed because she wanted to sleep there. I could not believe my luck!  She slept there for abut 2 hours and then woke up wanting to climb back in with me....oh well. It was worth a try!

She loves play acting.

She currently enjoys putting diapers on her stuffed toys and dolls/babies. In fact the moment she wakes she jumps off the bed and declares "puppy has done pee pee". She will run off to get toilet paper to wipe his "body" as she calls that part of the anatomy (so sweet!) and get a new diaper. I have a bag of left over newborn diapers which fit her dolls and animals perfectly. She can put a diaper on her toys by herself.

Other times she will be the doctor and check out her toys with her stethoscope, or put band aids on them. Or she will "have a party" or cook eggs. She loves to sit on the bed and put on make up. My Mom gave her an old purse with a small make up brush and an empty lipstick and she will brush her face and say "I am putting on make up" :-)

She is doing a lot of painting and artwork in school and its so nice to see how she can now draw circles etc. I even have her artwork on the fridge - how cool is that!  We love playing outside when the weather allows - we do bubbles, sidewalk chalk, water plans and yard work.

She loves her independence and pushing boundaries is part of our every day. It can get exhausting and exasperating for me...but I know its her way of becoming her own person.

She can put on and take off her shoes. Its amazing how she gets the correct shoe on the correct foot. The past few days she has started trying to put on her shorts and pajamas and is making good progress.

On the potty training front, we are moving slowly. She sits on the baby potty before we take a bath every evening and goes pee pee, and gets excited about throwing it into the big potty. She knows when she needs a diaper change after potty. I need to start encouraging her to sit on the potty at more defined times, maybe before we get dressed for school etc so it becomes a habit.

Gosh...so much more...her hair is really long and she allows me to make her hair into pony tails. She looks like a doll!

We are STILL on binkies - gosh I hate those things especially when she wakes at night wanting "more binkies please" ( lol -- at least she is super polite!!). I hope to break the habit off soon. Any ideas will be appreciated!

I could go on and on.....I adore her sweet face and cannot believe how big she is now. No longer a baby but a toddler! Sometimes when I pick her up and school and see her running to me I do a  double take - is that my Beanie looking like a little girl now!

Last night she was trying to snap her fingers, I do that to songs sometimes and she could not do it obviously. She looks at my hand and says I want to be big. I hugged and kissed her and said " all in good time baby - not too fast, okay!".

I love you sweet girl....you are my world!

Its been a while since I posted.

I read blogs almost daily after dinner, do some commenting, take a quick look at FB and by the time its just too late to coherently gather my thoughts to put together a post.

This week has gone by so fast. I cannot believe its the weekend again. I don't have much to report, just moving along busy with day to day things. I really want to post about Beanie but will wait a few more days until her 27 month birthday.

I have a business trip coming up in mid July to the West coast. It will be my first trip since the last time I flew when I was 10 weeks pregnant. On one hand I am excited to travel on the other hand not.

Unfortunately the trip is during Beanie's summer break from school so my parents will have her at home for two full days and night. I hope its not too exhausting for them, she is quite a handful now and very energetic. I travel one day, next day is a full day meeting and plan to take the red eye back that night!

In other news, my parents have some friends visiting from overseas at the end of the month. So that has spurred me into action in getting a LOT of stuff done around the house. Cleaning, organizing, etc, such as, getting the yard in order, scrubbing the baseboards until they are gleaming, cleaning the kitchen in areas I don't get to often. I also have guys coming in on Monday to do steam cleaning of a few area rugs and a love seat.

I bought a few new items to freshen up the place, such as a new bedspread for my (and Beanie's) bed,  a new front door mat etc. It funny how just a few small things make such a difference.

We have not been able to have any play dates for blueberry picking, since its been hot and the field closes early. I hope to take Beanie there tomorrow morning.

Hope you have some fun weekend plans!

Last weekend I ended up having to take Beanie to urgent care.

She woke up on Sat with some awful bug bites on her arms and legs, about 8 in total. They were not there Friday when I bathed her at night but she probably got bit sometime on Friday evening. She was itchy all day Saturday and I thought it was just mosquito bites, but by Sat night they were looking odd and I felt we needed to have them looked at. On Sunday I took her in.  I thought it may be some spider bite or something.  She seemed to have had a mild allergy to whatever bit her and they were getting infected so she was put on antibiotic for Impetigo and a topical cream. The pediatrician was glad I brought her in and so was I.  I kept her home from school on Monday simply so I could monitor her bites and make sure they were getting better and not worse. She is much better now and the bites are healing well.

The rest of the week is a blur of work and housework. On Tuesday I had a bit of time before work in the morning so I spent an hour cleaning up my back yard - pruning back some trees and shrubs. It looks great now! On Thursday I managed to slip out at lunch for a yoga class. I have not been in over a month and really enjoyed it. I REALLY miss my weekly yoga!!!



This weekend has been really fun so far.

Yesterday I did not feel like cooking dinner so decided to take Beanie to eat Chinese or as she calls its "food from China". We were going to do a takeout but she wanted to eat in so I obliged.  She enjoyed eating and was sweet and fun.

Later, when we sat in the car she said she wanted to go to "puppy kitties" as in the pet store. I told her it was dinner time and the puppy kitties were sleeping so then she says"I want to go to Target".

Ummm... what....you know Target?!

I asked her what she wanted to do in Target, she said "mine buy bubbles" and declared she wanted a pink one.  So off to Tar,get we went. I told her we were only going to get the bubbles and she agreed to stay in the cart. We got some bubbles and headed home to play with them. She loves bubbles but I am getting so bored of it to be honest!

Today had been a really wonderful day - the type of day I dreamed of before becoming a Mom.

Beanie and I had a really fun morning at home playing and around 11am headed out to a park with a small lake. I like this park because it has a play area that is entirely shaded. With the heat and humidity we have here a shaded park is ideal. It also has a small lake with a gazebo and ducks and geese so quite entertaining.

Beanie had a blast at the park. Its so cute how excited she gets as soon as I open the car door t get her out, Its like she can hardly contain her excitement. We fed the ducks and then she played on the slide and ran around having so much fun. We then walked to the gazebo and had a snack picnic, and later went back and played in the park.

After that we went to my parents place. Beanie played with the cat while I had my lunch. She said her tummy was full after eating her big snack at the park. We came home and she (and I) napped for 2 hours - bliss!

Tonight we went out for dinner with my parents to an Italian restaurant. My boss had told me to go out for a nice dinner with my family and expense it to the company since I have been putting in really long work hours the past month due to some staff leaving.  I had planned a dinner date with a girl friend which got cancelled so we decided it was the perfect evening for a family dinner. Beanie enjoyed herself and behaved really well.

Now she is out like a light and I am wondering what we should do tomorrow :-)  I have scheduled my dinner with my girl friend for tomorrow nigh so that may be a nice relaxed evening for me!