Year 1 is done

My baby is 1! She is now no longer a baby but a toddler. This year flew by! E is 22 lbs and 12 oz and 30 inches long. She is a little bundle of personality. She is crawling and standing unassisted but not yet walking. She can say a few words, including mama, dada, hi, bye and no. Her new favorite thing to do is to bring me a book that she wants me to read to her and have me read it over and over and over and over. I hope she keeps this love of books as she gets older. Here she is enjoying a book on her birthday

Pooptastic

I must the WORST diaper changer in the world. Well, maybe not the world but among other mothers, I rank pretty low. I cloth diaper full time and it's becoming a challenge for me. Not the cloth diapering, that part rocks, but the changing of the poop diapers. E's added mobility and need to grab everything around her doesn't help. As soon as I open the diaper she is making a grab for the poop! Here's what usually happens when I change a poop diaper: As soon as I lay her on the changing table she starts to cry. She hates having her diaper changed so I give her a toy or sing a song to calm her down. Then I open the diaper and examine the specimen quickly to see what I'm working with it. If it's a neat little turd I jump for joy and the rest of the process usually goes by without a hitch. The problem arises when we have mushy peanut buttery poop. Not only does this poop get all over her diaper area but it's also difficult to wipe off. All would be fine and dandy if she kept still during the butt cleaning process. However, she does not. Her little hands immediately begin to migrate south so I'm juggling trying to contain the poop in the diaper, grabbing a wipe and wetting it (yes I use cloth wipes too), holding her legs up so she doesn't get the poop that is still on her butt onto the changing pad, and keeping her hands away from her crotch. I'm lucky if I get through it without getting poop on myself. I tell ya, I need 6 hands to be able to do this. I don't know how other mothers do it. Just this week E grabbed some poop and smeared it on her cheek.I need to take some diaper changing classes or something. This stinks, literally.

Oh sleep, where art thou?

Whoever came up with the phrase "sleeping like a baby" clearly never had a baby. They are terrible sleepers. I have not had a good night's sleep in over a year. E was keeping me up before she was even born. From the second trimester of my pregnancy and on, I was getting up religiously twice a night to pee. After she was born it got worse. She was up every few hours around the clock. It gradually got better but she never did reach the point where she was sleeping through the night. I am currently getting up at least twice in the middle of the night and/or early morning to feed her. I pull out an arsenal of tricks to get her to settle down: swaddling, feeding, pacifier, sea horse, rainforest soothing sounds, white noise, rocking, singing, sushing, rubbing her belly, laying her in her crib and leaving her there alone. Sometimes nothing works, sometimes she goes down very easily. Maybe someday I will look back at this and laugh but right now I am just too damn exhausted.

She loves to cover her face with blankets or anything else she might find in the crib

Now that she is rolling over, there is more fun to have in the crib

Giving her a bottle and leaving her to her own devices doesn't work. I go back a few minutes later to check on her and she is soaked

Ah, nothing better than a sleeping baby

Half a year gone by

Today E is 6 months old! Can't believe how time is flying by. She is weighing in at 17 lbs 6 oz, a whole 10 lbs more than she weighed at birth. She is eating solids like a champ; she's very neat too! E is babbling up a storm, blowing raspberries, rolling over like a pro and sitting up for longer stretches. I'm so in love with my baby girl!!!

As is customary, I did a monthly photo shoot. My photography skills are sub-par. I imagine myself taking these great pictures but they always turn out just okay. Luckily, she's very cute!

WBA: These little hands.....

were made for grabbing. Long gone are the days when I could sit my little one on my lap and she calmly watched as I did whatever I was doing. Now she grabs, scratches, pulls and even lunges herself to get to whatever is near. And where does it all go? To her mouth, of course :)

Here you can see how she deftly attacks the laptop

Busting out of prison

E has had reflux since she was about 2 months old. She would cough and choke while eating and afterward if we laid her down flat. Our solution was to buy her a snazzy Acid Reflux Pillow. I referred to it as baby prison.

Basically it's a wedge that lifts her up at a 30 degree angle, the optimal angle for acid reflux prevention. The pillow has straps that hold it in place in the crib and that hold her up so she can't move.
Surprisingly, she really took to this pillow. I guess it made her feel like she was being hugged all night long.
Fast forward three months. E no longer had reflux since we started feeding her cereal. But guess what? She can't sleep without the pillow! At least at night time, it has become part of her bedtime routine! She is able to sleep flat during naps.
So what to do? Wait and see if she outgrows it? Or slowly try to wean her off of it and suffer a few sleepless nights? Tonight I put her down flat in the crib and she actually went to sleep with no complaints. Hope we can finally kick that bulky pillow to the curb!

P.S. Couldn't they have come up with a better name than the Acid Reflux Pillow?

No longer a ligermom?

So there is a new internet craze going around about zodiac signs. Somehow the cosmos have shifted and people are no longer the same zodiac sign as they thought they were. Well this kinda ruins my whole ligermom thing I've got going! There is a new zodiac sign in town by the name of Ophiuchus. The insertion of this constellation into the zodiac system reshifts everything we thought we knew:

Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18- May 13
Taurus: May 13- June 21
Gemini: June 21- July 20
Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20

Blah! E is now a Cancer!!! I am cigermom. Yeah, somehow that is not as catchy. Sounds like I'm a mom to cigarettes. Cancer is the crab. Crabs and tigers just don't go well together. I am not pleased at all. I hope this is a fluke.

New year, new baby

E is 2 days short of turning 5 months old and she has been through a lot this last week! For starters, we moved so she is in a whole new house. This took some adjusting to on her part. Our first night in the new house, New Years Eve, was simply awful. She cried and yelled and refused to sleep. She only wanted mommy. My husband joked that we should trade her in for a new baby. We were all exhausted but got through it okay. As the days went on she became more comfortable with her new environment. She still has some sleep issues but that is related to her teething, I think. I hope...
We started E on cereal this week, oatmeal cereal to be exact. I mix 1 tbsp of cereal with 2 tbsp of breast milk She then sits in a high chair and eats with a spoon, like a big girl! She likes it but gets frustrated by the way she has to eat it. She is used to an easy bottle and does not like to work for her food. I discovered this early on when I tried to nurse her. 

As you can see, she was more interested in playing with her bib

Another accomplishment this week, she is learning to hold her own bottle! Mostly she just grabs it and jerks it out of her mouth. Little by little she is learning to hold it steady.

 Lastly, my little one is starting to sit up unassisted. She still topples over but can support her weight with her arms.