In Good Hands

As November has begun, I have been reminded of the importance of expressing thankfulness on a regular basis.  It should not be just a Thanksgiving Day activity, but rather a habit that is exhibited in my life, day to day.  I have found myself in these past few days being made aware of the enormous blessings that I have been given.  The biggest blessings by far are my loving husband and my amazing daughter.  I can't imagine what my life would be like without them, and I could never fully express how full my heart is because of them.

My daughter, as I mentioned, is amazing.  She really has become the light of my life.  She delights me in ways I never could have imagined.  I am in awe, almost daily, of the new things she is learning and doing, and it reminds me of the wonderfully intricate way in which we are designed by our Creator.  At 15 months old, her language is impressive.  She signs and speaks, sometimes independently or in combination, quite a number of words and concepts.  (sign and verbalize: please, thank you, milk, eat, cereal, Mama, Dada, baby, ball, hat, bye-bye, hi, bath, blanket... verbalize: go, up, door, magnet, Boss [dog's name], rock-rock, diaper, blocks, apple, pumpkin, banana, puppy dog, book, shoe, sock, flower, cheese-toast... sign: friend, kiss, play, bed, sleep...)  She follows many verbal instructions, and, almost more impressively, knows when she is not supposed to do something, indicated by her proceeding to do said-thing while staring at the nearest parent/adult to see what reaction it will get.  As impressive as her intentional behaviors are, the thing that has most struck me has been an almost-involuntary reaction that I have seen in her.  A few days ago, she and I were sitting on the living room floor, playing with toys.  Our dog suddenly began barking loudly at a passing dog on the other side of the window.  My daughter's gut-reaction was to scramble across the two-foot space of floor separating us as quickly as possible so that she could plant herself in my lap and cling tightly to me.  No one taught her what to do when she was scared.  No one sat her down and explained (or demonstrated) how she was to react when startled.  She just knew, through experience, that her mama's arms are safe.  And when circumstances seem unsafe, you get to a safe place.  I understand that this is normal behavior, but for whatever reason, on that particular day, it really stuck with me as significant.  It made my heart fill with joy, knowing that, for all the mistakes I may make as a parent, I have instilled in my daughter at a very young age the knowledge that she is loved and cared for and protected.  I pray that, for years and years to come, I will continue to make this the overriding concept that I communicate to her. 

Communication

One of my favorite things about being a mom is watching my daughter learn and discover new things.  It has been clear for some time now that Aubrey's receptive language skills are developing well and she is starting to understand many of the things we say to her.  However, only just recently have we really been able to see a huge step forward in her expressive language.  While she is very verbal, she rarely says anything that could be classified as actual (understandable) verbal communication, but she has started using several signs to communicate her needs.  I am aware that she is by no means the first baby to successfully communicate in this way, but because she is mine, it just delights me!  It started with simple touch-correlation signs, such as me saying "where's your head" or "where's your belly" and her touching the appropriate body part.  (Those are the only two that she accurately identifies right now.  We are working on "toes.")  After that, it was as though a light bulb went off for her, and she started to realize that she could get me to understand what she wanted if she did the right motion.   She now regularly signs "eat/food" and "bed" and "teeth" (when it's time to brush her teeth) and "all done / all gone" (finished).  She will sometimes sign "milk" and I think is starting to pick up on "water."  She will sometimes still identify her head and belly when asked, although that trick is old news now and she isn't always interested in responding.

I really am just delighted when I watch her.  She is so wonderful.

Big Girl

After making it through the birthday weekend, Monday was officially ditch-the-pacifier day.  Baby Girl was only using it during naps and at night anyway, but after talking with the pediatrician about the way it was affecting her teeth, we decided it was time to quit cold-turkey.  A friend mentioned this weekend that my blog would be a great resource for new parents because "the Stone's have it all figured out."  But really, I think the truth of the matter is that the Stone's have a really fantastic baby who makes parenting pretty easy.  All that being said, project Ditch-the-Pacifier has gone surprisingly well and far less painful than I imagined.  Monday's nap started with ten minutes of mad baby, and then she passed out cold.  Bedtime was about the same.  The only down side was that normally when she wakes up in the mornings, she self-soothes and lays in bed for quite a while before insisting that we come get her; today, as soon as she woke up, she needed company.  The early morning wake-up, however, meant that we got two naps in today.  First nap started with only five minutes of crying.  The second nap, there were only about two or three minutes of crying, then she started singing along with her musical toy that she went to bed with.  It was stinking adorable.  (She did manage to find a pacifier that had been missing in her bed, so she had that in her mouth at the end of her nap, but I don't think she had it for long, based on the singing.)  The bedtime reaction could barely even be classified as a cry.  It was more the sound of the last-ditch effort of fighting sleep.  I'm really proud of her for adjusting so quickly.  Part of our plan, other than saving her teeth from further spreading, is to have her weaned from the pacifier prior to starting childcare later this month, and that is looking like it will happen!  All in all, a good day.  (Also got another "Tuesday Craft Day" project done with my pal JL, so it was good all around.)

Parenting, etc. (with a lot of etc.)

Today marks the end of mine and Rob's first full year of parenting.  This year has, by far, been the best year of my life.  Completely and altogether different than any other year, but still, by far, the best.  Our daughter is amazing.  She is beautiful and funny and well-behaved and smart... and she's only a year into this life of hers. 

As for the birthday part of the day, it was relatively uneventful.  I mean, really, what do you do with a one-year-old for her birthday?  We did birthday pancakes this morning and then played around naps.  This evening after she went to bed, I got all the decor in place for the party on Saturday.  I also did some Susie-Homemaker-ish things around the kitchen.  Then, I got sucked into the black hole that is the internet.... and that's when my mental wheels started turning.

So as with all things online, one link led to another, and I found myself reading the archives of a random blog that I came across.  It started off great.  (The information I was actually looking for... slow-cooker recipes that can be prepped and frozen ahead of time.)  Then, I couldn't stop myself from reading all of the back-logged posts with alluring titles, such as "breastfeeding fanatic," "42 days of pumping," "all-natural parenting," etc.  Many of these posts expressed thoughts on parenthood that I myself hold.  Then it got weird.  It wasn't the right-off-the-bat weird.  It was the slowly-ease-into-the-weirdness weird.  It started with some issues where I just thought to myself, "this lady is trying WAAAY too hard."  By that, I mean this woman clearly had certain ideas of the type of parenting she wanted to practice, and she was determined to follow through on these "philosophies" regardless of how much she had to fight and struggle against the way things seemed to flow naturally.  (She even had a post acknowledging this herself.)  Examples of what I mean:
-Mom was determined to breastfeed, despite her daughter's physical limitations to do so.  Her initial solution was to pump and then bottle feed.  Completely reasonable solution.  One that requires an unbelievable amount of personal dedication, but given the dedication, still completely reasonable.  Mom was eventually able to get daughter to nurse some of the time, but still used bottles for the bulk of the feeding.  Enter the trying-way-too-hard part: this wasn't good enough for mom.  Baby, obviously, was getting the nutrition she needed, but mom was determined (at like 10 months old) for baby to start nursing full time.  And she went to extreme lengths to try to make this happen.
-Mom was convinced that co-sleeping was the best option for their family.  (This example will be short because I think it speaks for itself.)  Baby fell out of bed at least 5 times, receiving bruises on several occasions.  Mom has resorted to putting the mattress straight on the floor, moving the night stands clear across the room, and lining the floor with pillows.  Trying too hard (in my humble opinion).

And then it happened.  The this-is-officially-weird-now part.  She decided to eat her placenta.  No, this is not the first time I've heard of this.  The thing that made this weirder than usual was that this was not an early postpartum (read: crazy hormones) decision.  No, this woman had it in her freezer FOR A WHOLE YEAR, planning to bury it in her back yard and plant a tree above it, but she never followed through on the original plan, and it all of a sudden came to her that she should eat it.  WHAT???

***

Now, switching gears, in relation to all of this, what does my current life look like?  What kind of parenting do I "practice"?  What areas could I be labeled "weird"?  Well, here it goes.

Parenting: I am spoiled.  I have the best baby ever.  I don't just say that because I like her; she really is a good baby.  She is an AMAZING sleeper, she eats well, she is generally happy.  She has made my job pretty much as easy as it gets.  All that being said, I'm sure whatever Rob and I did from day one certainly has had an influence on her being so good, even if we were just winging it as best as we could!  So what did/do we do?  It's hard to summarize a lifestyle, but here's my attempt at condensing the key points.  I breastfed Aubrey from the beginning.  We had a rough start, but I stuck to it.  I did not try to schedule her feedings.  I just fed her when she was hungry, and that always seemed to work out well.  After a while, she pretty much fell into her own schedule.  Sleeping is a similar story.  We never really tried to schedule nap time, and really not even bed time.  It just all started to fall into a rhythm.  We tweaked things here and there to find out what worked best, but it hasn't ever been a fixed schedule kind of thing.  However, getting to sleep is a different aspect than the timing of sleep.  I do not rock my baby to sleep.  She puts herself to sleep.  I really believe this is a huge part of why she is such a good sleeper.  She is not dependent on me (or Rob) to fall asleep because that is not how we have conditioned her.  We have a routine that we follow every night (which includes rocking) that signals that it is time to get sleepy, but her eyes are always open when I put her into her bed.  We do not force her eat a certain amount, or strictly limit how much she eats.  If she doesn't want to eat any more, we stop.  If she is fussing for more food, we usually give it to her.  And like I said, she is a great eater.  I wouldn't consider myself and Rob to be "hands-off" parents, especially considering a recent conversation I had with a friend about what the extreme of this looks like, but we do allow for a lot of freedom.

Home life: There are some things that I do in a non-typical way.  I make my own baby food (which these days is pretty much "normal people" food, just frozen into small portions), I use cloth diapers (which are semi-homemade), and I have just recently started couponing, using dried beans instead of canned, cleaning with baking soda, etc.  Is this "weird"?  Maybe.  Is it eat-your-placenta weird?  No.

I started this post with an all together different idea of where I was going with it.  I was going to talk about how we are in the process of weaning, and how if I didn't work outside of the home, I would probably be one of those moms who kept breastfeeding for a moderately long amount of time (not four years or anything, but probably two).  I'm a little sad that this time is coming to an end, although it isn't completely ending, as I will still nurse morning and evening.  I was going to talk about how I am having some anxiety about the idea of my baby being in full-time child care this coming school year and how many other things that has got me thinking of.  I was going to talk about my latest decision to start putting together a bunch of freezer meals that can be pulled out and cooked with ease.  But all of those ideas sort of morphed into the stuff I babbled on about above this paragraph.  Good night.

Sew Addicted

It's no secret that I'm broke this summer.  (Maternity leave ate up my summer pay checks this school year.)  However, I feel like we here at the Stone home have done a pretty good job of living within our means, and making the most of the down time we currently have.  For me, that has entailed taking on several new sewing projects... sometimes to the neglect of housework!  All that to say, my favorite latest project has been making baby dresses from old t-shirts.  I used this pattern/tutorial.  Some tutorials on blogs are poorly written, and I find myself re-reading them several times to get past the poor grammar and awkwardly phrased sentences.  However, this one is really great and easy to understand/follow.

I've learned several things that make sewing t-shirt material a bit easier.  First, STARCH.  Especially when a narrow strip of material is required, starch the heck out of the material BEFORE you cut it.  It makes life so much easier.  Then you can cut, fold, iron,and/or sew the material without the edges curling up. Speaking of which, you can make your own starch.  Just use one heaping tablespoon full of corn starch mixed with one pint (two cups) of water, mix well, and put into a spray bottle.  You will need to shake the bottle a bit between uses, as the corn starch does settle to the bottom.  The second thing that helps when sewing t-shirt material (also known as jersey knit) is to make use of the stretch stitch patterns on your sewing machine, especially around arm holes and other areas that will receive a lot of stress.  Even the straight stitch on the stretch setting (there's some alliteration for you!) makes a big difference.

Here are some pictures:

This is the first attempt.  I left the arm holes and hem raw, as the jersey knit won't unravel anyway.

This is how you prep the "yoke" for the top of the dress.  2.25" strip, folded in half, ironed, opened up, and then folded in on each edge, ironing as you go.  This is the part where the pre-starching really, REALLY helps.

This is the second dress, prior to adding the yoke.  (I finished the arm holes on this one.)

...and here's the yoke added.

And here's the finished product.  I decided to add a band at the bottom of this one.

I really like the way these have turned out.  There's another t-shirt dress pattern that I want to try out next, but that will probably have to wait until after the birthday bash (which, by the way, is coming up very soon!)

Here are some other recent projects:

This one is a button-down shirt turned baby dress.

And this is baby girl's birthday present!  I'm really happy with the way these turned out!

Baby shoes.  I got the pattern from this blog, but it looks like she has changed some things around, so I can't seem to find the same one any more.  (Lucky for me, I have it on paper.)

Birthday decorations.  Pennants (pictured), as well as fringe garland and fabric "lanterns."  Still planning to make tissue paper pom-poms, also.

A knitting needle "case" for friend Melissa.  It unfolds and has little individual pockets for various pairs of needles.

The Sippy Cup Cunundrum

We have started the weaning process in the Stone home.  If I did not have to go back to work in mid-August, we would not be at this point yet.  I am totally content not to pay for the liquid nourishment that my daughter needs.  However, I will be returning to work, so we need to get her to a place where she is not dependent on me, at least during business hours.  All that being said, we are learning about the world of sippy cups.  I first purchased this one by Munchkin:

I bought it because it was the cheapest one I could find (that looked decent), figuring we could try it first and upgrade later.  This works great for the YoBaby yogurt smoothies that Aubrey likes.  It is a very simple design: no weird valve parts inside to worry about, just the rubber nipple part, the handle-and-ring part, and the cup itself.  And, remarkably, it doesn't leak.

Recently, I decided we definitely were ready to have more than one cup in the house, especially with the weaning process on the horizon, so I went in search of more cups.  The only complaint that I had about the Munchkin cup was that there was no cover or cap for travel purposes.  I found this style cup from Avent:

The ones I bought have a flip cap instead of this style cap, but the rest is the same.  I thought it would be the best option for the diaper bag.  I liked the idea of the flip cap so there would not be a removable cap to lose.  We have used them several times now, and the only down side is the valve inside:

It's hard to see in this picture, but on the under side of the sippy part, there is a clear disc that attaches to the little peg thing in the center.  Number one, you have to take it off for cleaning... and it's clear, so it is invisible in the bottom of a kitchen sink full of soapy water (and fits in the sink drain if you forget it before pulling the plug).  Number two, while it does its job of keeping the cup from leaking (sort of), it also prevents the liquid in the cup from flowing nicely when baby sucks on it.  When the baby sucks on it, it does this weird straw-with-a-hole-in-it thing where too much air gets in.  (Yes, I tried it out to see for myself.)  And while baby is drinking, it tends to leak out the air hole!  Way too complicated for a not-so-impressive result.  And, more importantly, Aubrey gets frustrated with it.

So I plan to stock up on the Munchkin ones, and hopefully I can find some with the same top plus a cap.  If anyone reading this has found another cup that works for your little one, please comment letting me know which one and why you like it.

A Day in the Life of a Stay-At-Home Mom

No, I am technically not a stay-at-home mom for most of the year.  But for the summer, I am.  That's the beauty of teaching.  I get to experience both versions of parenthood.  The have-to-leave-your-baby-all-day-but-get-to-do-something-else version, and the my-whole-day-revolves-around-this-little-person version.  The latter goes something like this, for me:

Wake up when baby wakes up.
Nurse baby.
Play with baby.
Try to eat while baby plays.
Feed baby.
Play with baby.
Put baby down for a nap.
Shower and try to get something done around the house before baby decided nap time is over.
Get baby up when nap has come to an untimely end.
Play with baby.
Nurse baby.
Try to eat while baby plays.
Feed baby.
Play with baby.
Put baby down for another nap.
Pray that baby will stay asleep!
Try to get the thing done that I didn't get done during the first nap.
Get baby up.
Play with baby.
Nurse baby.  (Or recently, replace nursing session with whole milk.)
Try to have family dinner.
Play with baby until bedtime.
Go through bedtime ritual.
Put baby to bed.
Veg out on the couch.
Go to bed later than planned.
Repeat.

It's exhausting, and I completely love it.