6th tooth

Sasha's 6th tooth has erupted today! Despite the new tooth, she has been in amazingly good spirits and especially charming and cute today and the last few days. She has been a pleasure to play with.
For example, today she stirred for a feeding. She was laying next to me, feeding in the dark bedroom, and normally at that time she would just nurse back to sleep. However the blue glow of the alarm clock caught her eye. I saw her eyes widen at the alarm clock and she broke into the BIGGEST grin and started to crawl. She just LOVES that alarm clock and we normally have it facing the wall so it doesn't distract her in her sleep. Well today it did distract her from her sleep and she went from mostly asleep to wide awake in a matter of seconds. I was disappointed that she woke up so early but that huge smile on her face made it impossible for me to stay disappointed for long.

Which reminds me of another topic:
Toys that aren't really toys.
There are many objects that Sasha LOVES to play with that really aren't toys at all. For example those little door stopper thingies that keep doors from slamming into walls. She likes kitchen utensils. If she fusses in her high chair I merely have to hand her a potato masher, a meat tenderizer, and a ladle and she is a happy baby again. She likes to crawl around the house with one of my large plastic cooking spoons (looks like a wooden spoon except plastic). Then there's her squeegie. Yeah, HER squeegie. I do use it to wipe the condensation off the mirrors in the bathroom but for the most part it is her squeegie. She picked it out at Ikea and held it the whole time we were at the store. Real toys didn't interest her but she held firmly to that squeegie.


We did buy her a cool new toy this week:
It's a Fisher Price Intelli-table, which I guess was a collaboration with Fisher Price and Microsoft. Regardless, it is a really neat table toy. I looked at all the table toys at our local Babies-R-Us and nothing struck me as nearly as interesting as this. Besides, babies LOVE led lights...sort of like that glowing alarm clock that woke Sasha this morning. This table has lots of them that dance and make all sorts of neat patterns. She does seem to love the table. I'm glad to finally find something of interest to tempt her into standing. She is now a pro at pulling herself up to a stand.

Brief update

For several days, Sasha has been by far the least crabby as she's ever been. It was wonderful. She was such a joy. She is crawling great now, so she would crawl around the house and explore.
Then yesterday the crabbiness started again. She's got her 6th tooth coming in and she completely altered her sleep schedule drastically. This is not a good week for us to have her switch to a day shift schedule as there is a lot of loud construction noises in our building this week. I have been feeling so very exhausted. Jon's back has still been painful for him. He had to have an MRI on Sunday morning and we are awaiting the results from that.
Cassie has been wonderful, and very pleasant to have around. She's been playing her Warcraft game, drawing pictures, and teaching herself how to photoshop from online tutorials. She is very talented.

Signed POTTY!

Today when Sasha (10 months old) woke up, she seemed really crabby. She was crying and seemed to be making a strange gesture with her hand, sort of like waving but more deliberate. I figured she was hungry so I started to feed her. Halfway through the feeding she stopped eating and started crying. She did the strange hand gesture again. Then she started grunting, turning red and started pooping. I said to her "Oooh Sasha are you going potty?" and she started making the gesture again very deliberately at me. Then it hit me. She was signing POTTY! (sign looks like you're shaking your hand with it positioned in the 'letter t' position, see link for sign video). Holy cow! I totally didn't expect her to ever sign that to me until she was like 2 or 3 years old. She didn't put her hand in the letter T position but it was definitely her version of potty.

I read a baby sign language book by Dr. Garcia and it suggested to do the potty sign with your baby even though you don't expect them to understand for a while because it would help with potty training later. So whenever I saw her grunting or obviously going potty I would sign potty at her. Also whenever I went potty, I usually have to take her into the bathroom with me and sit her down on the floor next to me. I know, no privacy for me but it's the only way I can go and still keep an eye on her. I always sign POTTY to her whenever I am going too. So she's seen the sign. I just didn't realize that she actually understood what it meant.

So this evening after she signed to me, I took her out to dh and told him what happened. I asked her to show her daddy how to sign POTTY and she did it for him. So she definitely meant to sign potty! Yay!

This makes me happy as I haven't seen a sign out of her in at least a month, and I've been very good about signing to her :)

Surprise!

Surprise!

Hide and seek! Sasha's big sister Cassie would run and hide, and Sasha would go nuts looking for her. Cassie decided to go hide with the camera and take a pic the moment Sasha 'found' her. And that is what resulted. Surprise!
Two more Hide & Seek pictures:


Feeding her Dolly
Next we have Sasha feeding her baby doll. A good sign of pretend play already. She likes to take the toy baby bottle, shove it in the baby's mouth or perhaps beat the baby doll upside the face with it a few times. She makes these cute smacking sounds to simulate the baby eating. Then she gets curious about the bottle and tries to take a few swigs herself :)


Glasses
Sasha tries on my old army "BCG" glasses.

Pardon me. I'm going to have to ask you to keep it quiet in the library.

Pictures from the Playdate

I decided to do a separate post with the pictures from the playdate. Any of the pics can be clicked on to view in larger size.

Sasha plays with and cries at the babies.


Cute baby Nora crawls over to Sasha. Nora tells Sasha how much she likes her shoes. Aww a girl bonding moment.


Sasha cries at Nora. Doh!
Sasha is okay with the babies so long as her mommy holds her.


Sasha cries at the babies. Babies are confused at the crying Sasha.


Baby Zayden tries to comfort Sasha by petting her leg, which makes her cry more. Then Nora pokes crying Sasha with a stick! Ohno!


Sasha's first time in a swing

Playdate

Since I found out I was pregnant with Sasha, I frequented a message board online. The women on the message board were all pregnant with due dates in September 2006. We all had our babies, and continue to post to the message board. It is so helpful to get advice from other mothers who are going through the same baby phases at the same time.
One of the mother's on the board hosted a big midwest playdate and since it was near the house of one of Jon's friend's, we decided to go. Jon got to visit his friend, Sasha got to see other babies her age, and I got to finally meet some of the mothers that have been so helpful to me the past year and a half.
The drive itself was about four hours each way. My goal was to make the trip with as little disruption to Sasha's sleep schedule as possible, which meant keeping her on a night shift schedule. I think we accomplished that! Yay!
The babies were absolutely adorable, and I was not disappointed meeting the mother's I've only talked to online. All in all, I had a lot of fun.
Sasha was very high-strung. She cried every time a baby came near her. Actually, she cried a lot. Normally I wouldn't have thought anything of her anxious behavior, but none of the other babies were as anxious as Sasha was. As a matter of fact, they were all so easy going that I nearly jawdropped. Let me clarify a bit. Sasha acted the same way she always acts. I just thought it was a phase or normal baby behavior. It wasn't until I saw the other babies that I realized that her behavior is not normal. Now I start to worry if Sasha isn't a little too over-anxious. It wouldn't surprise me. Cassie and I have very anxious personalities as well. I was just HOPING that she would skip that trait from me and take her personality from her father. I can still hope I guess. I do think I'm starting to see pieces of her true personality and I suspect that she will probably be a little more anxious than most kids.
But like I said, Sasha and I did have fun. Sasha got to go on a swing for the first time. She loved that. She got to play with lots of nifty toys and got to see some babies. Even if she would only watch them from a distance she did seem to enjoy it immensely.
Cassie came along with me to the baby playdate. She was mostly bored as there were only babies and adults, not that kids her age would have made a difference. She sat in a chair and drew pictures. She was tired and took a nap. Poor kid, I know she didn't want to go. I'm glad she at least behaved herself.

Another tooth

Oops, I shouldn't let so much time go between posts. Now I have way too much catching up to do.

New Tooth-
July 1st I think her 4th tooth, the top right broke through. There seems to be quite a bit of space between her two front teeth, and I hope that gap closes. Sasha has what appears to be another bump on her gums so I think she's got another tooth coming in on top next to her left front tooth.
While those teeth were coming in, Sasha was SO VERY crabby. For at least two weeks straight my fun baby girl was replaced by a very crabby girl. Fortunately this week, she seems to be back to almost her old self.

Last week was one of the best sleep schedules we've ever had for such a long time. It was perfect. Years from now, when I look back on the sleep situation, last week is what I will have in mind. Basically, the moment I got of work and walked in the door, Sasha was ready to go to sleep immediately. She and I would crawl into bed, nurse her to sleep, and we would fall asleep together. Jon would lay on the other side of her and she would alternate cuddling with each of us. We got a good 8-10 hours of sleep a day, and woke up in the mid-afternoon with plenty of day left to actually go and do something if we wanted to.