a piece of cake

Well, a whole cake, really. This is the cake I decorated tonight. It tastes much better than last week's. It's chocolate, and I don't even like chocolate cake, normally! I've been using this cookbook called "The Cake Mix Doctor." It uses a box cake as your base, but you add lots of other things to it to make it seem more homemade. The white cake was kind of dry. This chocolate one is really moist and dense and good. Anyway, this week we learned how to do the shell border you usually see around cakes you buy that are already decorated and how to make some different kinds of flowers.

Not much else to tell you about, except that she's been sleeping through the night again! Hooray!! Last night was an exception, but for the most part she's sleeping from 7 pm until 6:00 or 6:30 am!!! It's so nice to sleep all night....I forgot what it felt like.

Her new favorite thing to do is wiggle in her high chair. She looks like she's dancing. I don't know where she got this idea, but she just sits and shakes her head and upper body back and forth like a little dance. It's so cute! She also really enjoys standing up in the bathtub...a habit Daddy and I are trying to break. Clapping is still a favorite pasttime as well, especially to music.

happy valentine's day

let him eat cake

So just for fun I'm taking a cake decorating class at Michael's craft store on Monday nights for the next few weeks. It's great to get out in the evening by myself and do something just because I want to. Last week we learned how to ice a cake, with lots of neat tricks I never knew. Then tonight we had to take an already iced cake to class and we learned how to do writing and to make stars (for borders and filling in pictures). If you know my husband you know how big his sweet tooth is, so he's ecstatic that for the next few weeks he'll have a whole cake to eat each week! I made him take a picture of it before he cut into it after I brought it home, though, so here it is. We got to choose any design we wanted, so I did hearts for Valentine's Day. I am pretty happy with how it turned out except I accidentally touched my knuckles on the cake while I was doing something else and it made a mark.... if you look carefully at the top you can see it, but oh well. It doesn't change the taste!

For those of you who want to know what's going on with our little one, her fourth tooth has popped through, she was 10 months old last week, we went to the nutritionist and found out she's gained more weight and that for her height, she's exactly where she should be weight-wise. She's just a little shorter than most babies her age, so she weighs less too, so that brings her percentiles down. It was a huge relief to know that she's getting enough to eat. She's slept through the night for the last few nights, so that's a huge blessing (yeah, I know, most babies slept through the night months ago, but not my baby.... we've tried everything, including letting her cry it out forever, but she'll cry all night if she feels like it.). We'll see if the sleeping through the night trend continues. She's gone through spurts before, getting my hopes up each time that it's permanent, so I'll just have to wait and see.

These pictures were taken on her 10 month birthday. The second one I took because this is what she tries to do whenever we take a picture now. As soon as I took it she fell off the chair onto the floor!!! I felt bad for taking the picture and not stopping her instead, but maybe it taught her to not climb on the furniture anymore!













She continues to crawl all over, becoming more adventurous with where she goes. We've learned to keep the bathroom door shut, after finding her sitting on the bathroom floor with a large portion of the toilet paper unrolled all around her (she was only out of my sight for a few seconds--how did she do it that fast???). She hasn't discovered the stairs yet, so I'm thankful for that. I have a gate ready to put up at the bottom so she doesn't try to climb up, but I haven't had to do that yet.

She's still cruising all around the furniture, and has become really, really fast. If she has something in her hands she'll even let go and stand there for quite awhile holding it, chewing on it, and playing with it, without holding onto any furniture without realizing that she's balancing herself.

We're supposed to get a huge snow storm tonight, so we'll see if what they're predicting is true. I hope for the sake of my teaching friends that we do, so they get a snow day, but it seems like whenever they make a big deal about it and talk about it forever on the news, it's never that bad. We shall see!

eat your heart out, Mozart...

...you have some competition! Here's our own little prodigy.

It's been super cold here the last several days. We haven't gone out much. She has another cold, and Mommy's and Daddy's are still lingering around, too. Yuck. When will this end?

She continues to stand for longer intervals, and today she kind of took a step--twice! I say kind of because as soon as she stepped out, she fell down, but she really did try to step! She'll be there before too long.

Her newest passion is clapping. She's been clapping since Christmas Eve, but not very often. Now she crawls, sits up, looks around, and claps a few times, and then does the whole process again. She also likes to clap in her highchair. This is all well and good until Mommy's trying to spoon a bite of squash in her mouth and she claps her hands together with the loaded spoon in between her hands! Yes, this happened yesterday. Squash went everywhere. It happened again today with oatmeal. Yum! And today she was really fussy, even while she was eating (this is rare--she's decided she likes eating now, most of the time), so she was crying (with real tears and everything) while I was trying to feed her. All of a sudden she started clapping. I said, "Most people don't clap while they're crying, sweetie." She didn't seem to care. She kept on clapping and crying. It was pretty funny. I had to contend with both as I navigated the spoon from the bowl to her mouth. I was lucky any of it ended up in her mouth.

Stay warm, everyone!

bigfoot

Our tiny girl has some big feet, don't you think? Daddy put his shoes on her the other day, just for a laugh.

As I'm writing this I'm listening to those big feet kicking the wall between her room and the computer room. She's just gone down for a nap, but rather than falling asleep nicely, she's fussing, playing, and making it very well known that she doesn't want to go to sleep. I just peeked in on her and she was laying on her back cross-ways in the crib with her feet up in the air kicking the back of the crib and the wall. What a stubborn little thing!

it's been awhile...

Sorry to those of you who check here all the time for an update. It's been hard to update lately for several reasons:
1) my laptop stopped working, so I now can only get online when my little girl is sleeping--something she doesn't do very well!!
2) we all three have been sick--Daddy is still sick, I'm not sure but I think I may be getting sick again, and our little one is getting over an ear infection.
3) I subbed at my old school Monday and Tuesday of this week, so there were several busy days in there. Grandma came down to babysit, which was great, but they were still tiring days for me. I don't know how you working moms do it!!

So anyway, no updates....sorry.

Let's see, what can I tell you about? She's got another tooth--one of her two front teeth popped through last week and is steadily growing in. I'm sure the other one is close behind. Her gum is swollen right there. She's crawling like a pro and cruising around the furniture at record speeds. She's learning to keep her balance and can let go and stand on her own for a few seconds at a time. She'll be walking before I know it.

That's about all that is going on here. It's freezing cold, so we've been staying in as much as possible. I'm looking forward to warmer weather so we can get out more. Cabin fever is going to set in before too long. I guess I got spolied with the warm fall and beginning of winter that we've had. Now that it's really winter, I'm not ready for it!

across the room!

We have an honest to goodness crawler on our hands now! I think she's been holding out on us, because this afternoon she just up and took off across the living room! She crawled to the window, which is low to the ground, pulled up, and stood and looked out for 10 or 15 minutes.






Then she got down and crawled back across the room to her Incrediblock toy and started to play. Daddy caught her on video, so I got to see it, even though I was gone at the grocery store! Soon after I got back I got to see if for myself as she crawled over to see Mommy. Since then she's been all over the place. We can't leave her alone now.

Here she is crawling to Daddy, who is inside her house (a Christmas present). She loves pushing the doorbell, which turns on the light (the light is her favorite part).

standing, standing, and more standing

Boy, does she ever love to stand! She used to play so contentedly on the floor by herself while I got something done. Those days are long gone. Now she wants to stand up to everything, and if she's not standing, she's trying to pull up so she can stand. She's now perfected the art of walking around and around in circles around her leap frog table. She does this for a good 20 minutes or so before getting frustrated and wanting to move on to something else.



And the most frustrating is that she's learned to stand in her crib (thankfully after we moved the mattress down this past weekend!) So now when she goes in to go to sleep, if she feels like it she'll pull up and stand, and then cry and cry because she can't get down and go to sleep. I never know if she's crying because she's standing or if she's crying because she just is tired and having trouble going to sleep, so I always have to go check on her, which makes her even more mad because "Mommy came in and didn't get me!!!" I guess I need to teach her how to get down if I ever want this phase to end!

look what I can do!

I should probably cross off "crawl" from the last post.... she really only crawled twice that day and only once since, so she really isn't a crawler (which is fine with me...much less chasing around that way!)

But she can stand up to things and walk with her walker! I think she's going to walk before she really crawls. She loves to stand and pull up (and wants to do it ALL DAY LONG...on Mommy, of course!). She dosen't really know how to get down yet, so she cries after awhile when she's had enough and realizes that she's stuck!

We're still struggling with eating. She had her nine month check up this week and the doctor is sending us to a nutritionist, because she's dropped to the 10th percentile for weight. She's supposed to be able to give me tips to get her to eat better, and maybe some sort of nutritional supplement or something to get her to gain weight. Last night we were so proud of her--she ate an entire container of baby food for the first time ever...but then she threw up in bed, right as she was going to sleep. What a mess! So much for eating a whole container. Maybe her tummy is just too small!

Despite the eating issues, though, she's full of smiles and is as happy as can be (most of the time).
She loves music, and anytime one of her toys starts playing music she gets a huge smile on her face and starts to "dance."

some new tricks

I forgot to mention yesterday that she's added some tricks to her repertoire!

Let's see....she can now
1)clap her hands
2)dance to music
3)crawl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, the crawling just happened this morning. She really didn't want to be sitting on the floor where I had put her, so she started coming toward me. She's been doing that for weeks, but she never gets further than putting her hands on the floor, leaning towards what she wants, then doing a nose dive. But today she crawled two crawls before doing a nose dive! Progress!! She's been practicing all morning, too. She hasn't done more than two crawls at once, but hopefully that'll improve with practice.

Now we've got our work cut out for us...........

Happy New Year!

Whew! What a busy couple of weeks it's been in our little world...lots of traveling, presents, food, presents, more traveling, and did I mention presents??? We're going to have to get a bigger house to accomodate all of the toys!!!

Let's see...I'll start with December 22nd. That night we pretended that it was Christmas eve at our house. In my family growing up we always got to open one present on Christmas eve, and it was always new PJs. So I continued the tradition and on her first Christmas, she got some new PJs, too.



However, she didn't get to open them because Mommy didn't wrap them. But she DID get to open a present--it was the book, "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Mommy and Daddy had picked it out together for her and we chose this one because we liked the pictures the best. After bathtime and putting on the new PJs, she opened the present and Daddy read the story to her before bed.

The next morning was going to be our Christmas morning. She woke up wanting to eat at 5:00 AM, and Daddy wanted to get up then to open presents! We were both so excited about giving her her presents. But we put her back to bed and waited until she got up around 7:00 to open the presents. How many times will that happen--that we're waiting for HER to wake up Christmas morning!?

Daddy went downstairs to turn the lights on while she got up and got her diaper changed. Then we went downstairs and saw everything Santa had left. She opened her stocking first and loved the different chewy balls Santa had put inside. She also got a little tamborine in there that she really likes. Then we started the presents. She was more concerned with eating the paper than what was actually inside, but she did enjoy seeing Elmo and chewing on his eyes! Her big present this year was a toy box that Daddy made for her. It's not quite finished (it still needs to be stained), but it is all put together so Daddy brought it in for her to see Christmas morning. He did such a beautiful job on it.



After playing for a little while and taking a nap, we got packed up and left for Grandma and Grandpa's house up north. Riding in the car with her is always an adventure....she sleeps for the first 1 1/2 hours, but the final hour is always a crying fest. Ugh. No matter what we do, she cries. But we made it to Grandma's and she perked right up, enjoying a whole new set of toys and people to play with.



The next day, Christmas Eve, she got an even bigger treat--her cousins came to visit! She hadn't seen them since the summer, since they're in North Carolina for the year, so everyone was so glad to see her and Emma especially was so excited to have another girl to play with. She was so good with her--playing peekaboo, bringing her toys to play with, and giving her hugs and kisses.

Christmas morning she opened the stocking at Grandma's house--more fun things to chew on!! She got to see Grandma get her big present from Grandpa--a new car!!! It was a huge surprise to Grandma, but we all knew she was getting it. She was shocked. After that excitement, we packed up and went to Granny and Papa's house. There she saw lots more cousins and had several presents to open. She started to get a bit overwhelmed with all of the people and noise, but she was a trooper. She slept in the car on the way back to Grandma's after lunch.

Then we had Christmas at Grandma's, which always means lots of fun, presents, and a BIG mess! She got better at opening her presents as the day went on, but especially enjoyed the ribbon on the package her baby doll came in from her aunt and uncle and cousins.

We stayed for a few more days and then came home to our house again. It was nice to get back into her routine and have her sleeping in her own bed.

Last night we had a party....not really a new year's eve party, because it was only from about 3:00-7:00 pm, but we wanted to have a Christmas party, and there weren't any dates that worked except for New Year's Eve! It was fun to see our friends and have the kids get together to play. Everyone enjoyed the new Christmas presents, and she did a good job of sharing her toys!

So there you go...a recap of the last couple of weeks in the world of weed. It's been tiring, hectic, but fun. I'm ready for things to return to normal for awhile, though!

what's up in the world of weed?

It's been awhile since I've updated. Life has been busy the past couple of weeks. This week it has finally died down a bit. The best news of all is that except for two nights, our little one has slept through the night for about a week and a half now! Hallelujah! I had forgotten what it was like to wake up and actually feel rested, like I had slept that night. It's so nice to wake up in the morning and feel energetic. I don't think I've felt that feeling since before I got pregnant!

Today we had to go to the pediatrician because I was worried about her lack of weight gain. In two months she has only gained one pound, two ounces. I talked to the doctor about how to get her to eat more--food just doesn't seem too exciting to her. The doctor told me to go ahead and give her pretty much whatever we eat, with the exceptions of a few things babies aren't supposed to have until they're older. So tonight she was thrilled to eat pancakes with her oatmeal and pears for dinner. She loved them! And at lunch she ate a ton of yogurt--I think that's her new favorite food. The doctor said to give her that every day for lunch because it's high in calories. I had given it to her a couple of times in the last week and she liked it, so I'm sure she'll love lunch from now on!

Let's see....what else is going on....we're getting ready for Christmas. Every day she likes to sit on the floor in the living room, look at the Christmas lights on the tree, and play with this curly ribbon that we've now turned into her toy. It fascinates her for about 20 minutes a day. Today it was so warm and sunny that I took her outside and she got to swing on her new swingset for a little while. She loved looking at the shadows on the ground and watching the wind blow the tree limbs a little bit.

That's the update from our house. I probably won't write again until after Christmas.

family pics

We had family pictures taken yesterday. These are just a few of them. Enjoy!!

oh christmas tree...

Here's her first Christmas tree. We rushed through dinner last night so we could put it up while she was still awake. She loved watching us put the lights on, because they were lit up and strewn all over the floor. But when we started putting the ornaments on, she started getting sleepy and fussy. I really wanted to keep her up so we could get some pictures, so I picked her up and she started "helping" me put the ornaments up--which means she tried to grab every single one out of my hands and put them in her mouth. She didn't succeed too often. Her new "Baby's First Christmas" ornament was the first to go up, along with one we made with her handprint (I bought a kit to make it). I'm not sure what I'm laughing at in the pictures...I wish SHE was laughing too!












After we were finished we put her Santa hat on and took pictures. She tried to pull the hat off the whole time and ended up with it over her eyes.















This is one of my favorites....it looks like she's giving us attitude about having to wear this hat over her eyes.

happy thanksgiving

I just wanted to share pictures. Some are from thanksgiving and some are from this afternoon on her new swingset. Daddy just put it together this afternoon and it was such a nice day that we took her out to give it a try.

Here's a brief update on how things are going....she's been sleeping better, grunting much, much less, and smiling lots and lots. She's been a happy girl the last week or so, and was such a good girl over the holiday weekend.

a weekly update

I haven't updated because there's not much to update you on....she still has a cold, is still teething, and is still waking up multiple times at night. This, too shall pass....

During the day she's my happy, smiley girl, most of the time (except when she does her very loud, very annoying new little grunting noise to get our attention). She's discovered the joys of playing with pots and pans while Mommy cooks supper, though she doesn't quite get that you're supposed to bang the pan with the spoon to make the most effective noise, not drag the pan or the lid along the floor.

She's learning to drink from a sippy cup. I read a tip in a magazine that said to practice it in the bathtub, so if it dribbles, it doesn't matter. So that's what we've been doing. In addition to getting clean, she's also getting hydrated! She's getting better, and knows exactly what to do with the cup now when she sees it, though I have to help her hold it.

She's also begun eating Cheerios. She's getting better at picking them up with her thumb and index finger, but still needs work on getting it from the high chair tray to her mouth. She takes it up there, so she knows where it's supposed to go, but she either drops it in her lap at the last second, or it's stuck to the palm of her hand and won't go into her mouth. More Cheerios end up in the high chair seat or on the floor than in her mouth, but she's learning!

That's the update. Hopefully by next week I'll have good news that she's over her cold, sleeping better, and no longer grunting (her dad and I really don't like this new development!).

the streak really IS over...

The last two nights she's gotten up in the middle of the night. She has a cold and she's teething again, so I guess that's why. Oh well...the sleep was nice while it lasted.

Here's our precious girl...Daddy took the day off from work today. He was out raking leaves and wanted to take her pictures in the leaves. She loved them and couldn't stop trying to shove them in her mouth. Yuck!

And here she is in the "birthday chair" where we take her picture every month on the 9th, her birthday. She was seven months old yesterday.

I was wrong!!!

I've never been happier to be wrong. The streak ISN'T over! She did sleep last night. Yes, it was difficult to get her to sleep, but she slept all night long until waking up to eat this morning.

She still has a cold, but it doesn't seem as bad as it did last night when I wrote.

Hooray for being wrong!

the streak is over...

It's been a week since I last wrote. I thought I'd have good news to report, but I waited too long. She slept through the night for five nights in a row. It was a wonderful thing. Then today she got a runny nose. It ran and ran and ran some more. By the time it was bedtime, she could hardly breathe as she ate her last bottle. She went to bed a little early because she skipped her third nap (I think it's phasing out now), and went to sleep without too much fuss, but woke up coughing and then crying every hour or so. She went back to sleep each time until about 9:45. There was no going back to sleep that time. I went in to console her and she was WIDE awake. She got to come in and sit with Daddy while he watched TV while Mommy found the cold medicine. I don't know how much good it does, but I'm willing to try anything. It took me 45 minutes to get her back to sleep, after lots of coughing, sneezing, wiping her nose, suctioning out her nose, more crying, wiping her nose, whimpering, rubbing her eyes, staring at shadows on the wall from the night light in the hall, wiping her nose, fussing, coughing, spitting up, wiping her face....you get the idea. It was a long 45 minutes. Poor little girl. Now it's way past my bedtime, but I'm wide awake and waiting for her to start crying again any minute.

So the streak is over.... no more full night of sleep for Weed tonight.

Halloween

Here's another Halloween picture where she actually smiled. She "helped" pass out candy for about 30 minutes with Daddy (meaning she wore her costume, looked cute, and squirmed in Daddy's arms while he passed out candy), and then Mommy took her up and got her ready for bed--she was exhausted.