Dancing Baby

Lately, Sasha has been a happy little dancer. She dances to EVERYTHING. Commercial on tv? Dance dance! The credits music at the beginning or end of a show or movie? Dance dance! Background music at bookstores and anywhere else we go? Dance dance! Her musical fridge magnet or her Baby Einstein musical Kaleidoscope? Dance dance!
So iTunes has been one of her favorite things to do. Dad fires up the iTunes and the visualizer and she is in dancing baby heaven. She even says 'dance dance' when she wants to dance or when she's dancing.
Today, she started bouncing her hips to the sides, grabbed Jon's hand, said "Da!?" and looked at him like "May i have this dance?". Can you imagine? It was so heartwarming. I think it made his heart skip a beat.

Now let's talk about sleep. Today she and I got 14, yes fourteen, hours of sleep. Crazy! My husband redid the covering on the bedroom window to block out the daylight sun so we can sleep during the day (we're night shifters), and it is now nearly pitch dark in our bedroom, day or night. It's wonderful. But... the complete darkness during sleep seems to be having an extra effect on our sleep. The last few days Sasha and I have gotten extra sleep and had a hard time waking up. (too bad poor dad has not. Construction noises in the building keep him awake.) If it's the window coverings, I'll have to find a way to wake us up after we've gotten enough sleep to prevent us from over-sleeping so much. As nice as it sounds to sleep all day, we do have other things in our lives we should do besides sleep. It's probably best if we actually wake up and do stuff. Maybe get out of the house once in a while like normal people.

Apple Picking!

Sunday I took the girls to the apple orchard. Like I mentioned in my last post, it is something I like to do every autumn, and it was Sasha's first time going apple picking with us!


Sasha picks her first apple. After we took this picture, I realized that it looked like Sasha has HUGE arms and hands. No those are not her hands, those are mine.

Sasha and her mommy at the corn maze.

Have an apple! Cassie climbs trees and passes me the apples at the apple orchard.

Cassie monkeys around in the apple trees.

Sasha shows off her apple. Once we handed her the baby sized apple, she held on to it for the rest of the trip. Although she offered it to every passing stranger, every goat, and everyone in the restauraunt we later went to. As a matter of fact, she's offering it to Cassie while she takes the picture.

Here goat, have my apple! Just kidding!

Goats! Sasha LOVED them, especially this little one. The feeling seemed mutual. The moment Sasha saw the goats she squealed happily, pointed, barked at them, and blew them kisses. She squirmed in my arms til I let her play with them.

Sasha happily plays with the goats.

"Look at my apple!", Sasha shows off her apple in the restauraunt at the orchard. I love this picture.

Pumpkin Hater- Almost everyone at the orchard posed their little ones in the pumpkin patch for pics, so I thought it would be nice to do that too. Nope, Sasha did NOT like the pumpkins.
The lady at the apple orchard says Sasha is the only baby she's ever seen cry at the pumpkins. "People put their kids with the pumpkins to take pictures all day," she explains, "and I've not seen any of them cry like that"


Sasha sleeps on the trip back, clutching her well-worn "Bad Baby" book.

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At the end of the trip, Cassie admitted that while she originally didn't want to go to the orchard, she's glad we did. She said she had fun. I smiled to myself. I had fun too.

Apple Memories

For several years, Cassie and I had a tradition. When autumn rolls around, we trek on over to a local apple orchard and pick ourselves a metric buttload of fresh picked apples. I usually send Cassie up in the trees in search of the perfect apple. Then I make her carry the heavy bag full of apples to the car while she whines that it is too heavy. We then spend the next few weeks wondering what to do with 3,892,782 tons of apples. Apple pie, applesauce, apple jam, apple butter, apple chutney, spiced apples, baked apples, my mother-in-law's recipe for apple crisp, and just plain apples. So many we get sick of them. Ah, pleasant memories. We're not a family with many traditions, so it's nice to have at least one.

But alas, last year at this time, I was pregnant with Sasha, and it was not wise to go wandering out in the apple orchards. So we had to skip the annual apple picking. I was very sad to miss it. This year, Cassie didn't want to go. I was starting to be afraid that our autumn tradition was dying.
It made me sad. Our one tradition was at risk of dying. In my mind, I had visions of my children growing up, moving away from me, forgetting to call their dear old mother. But come autumn time, I wanted them to notice the weather cooling off and think to themselves "It's almost apple picking weather" and maybe have a few memories of picking apples, cooking apples, and eating them. Or maybe some day when they're mother's, they'll take their own children apple picking. Wishful thinking but is it too much for a mother to want to make happy memories for her children?
We did get to go on Sunday. It was fun for all. And made extra special because it was Sasha's first annual trip to the apple orchard.
Hopefully not her last.

I am BRILLIANT!!!!

Now that Sasha has been sort of walking, I was thinking ahead about good push toys for little walkers. Almost every young child, myself included when I was a little one, has one of these:

But after Sasha showed much interest in a little Hoover Slider cordless stick vacuum that a waitress was using to clean under tables at our local Baker's Square, I came up with a BRILLIANT idea. Why not buy one of those little vacuums for Sasha and put her to work while she plays!!!
So Sasha is now the proud owner of one of these babies:

I tell you, I am a GENIUS! She loves it and I can already forsee that my young cleaning-obsessed virgo toddler will probably spend hours making sure the carpet in our apartment is spotless.
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Hear my Wookie Baby Roar

My husband has been calling Sasha a "wookie" because she whines and cries like one. I thought it was mildly amusing. But today he downloaded some Wookie sound files onto his computer and kept playing them in a loop while she was doing her Wookie-cries.
Yup, she does sound like a baby wookie when she's crabby. Weird!
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Well, I suppose I spend enough time complaining when we don't get enough sleep. It is only fair that I should rave about how well Sasha and I have been sleeping this week. As I write this, I am recovering from 10 1/2 hours of sleep. Sasha slept 12 hours straight the other day too! My complaint now? Too much sleep! Hah! There's so much stuff I should be doing and instead I'm sleeping my days away.
But like I said, Sasha has been sleeping a lot too. I wonder if it's because she's learning how to walk? (She's still walking back and forth between my husband and I when we have the chance to sit on the floor with her. I enjoy every minute of it.)Anyways you'd think that she'd be in a great mood with all the extra sleep she's been getting but no, she's apparently pretty crabby while I'm at work according to reports from my husband. The moment I walk in the door, she's all smiles for me, hah!

Today, I hope that I DON'T get too much sleep. I want to take the girls to an apple orchard, which I can only do during the daytime (sucks to be night shift when I want to go out and do stuff). It's been tradition. Hopefully we'll make great memories, good pictures, and yummy apple sauces, jams, and pies. If I'm in luck, maybe I'll even get a pumpkin too :)

I should also mention that tooth number 8 is FINALLY making it's way in. It has officially broken through her gums. Explains some of Sasha's recent crabby behavior. Tooth 9 and 10 are lined up and ready to come through soon. I can feel them below the skin of her gums but they might take a few weeks.

Return of Daddy Dance

"Daddy Dance" is one of the most heart-warming memories of my life. When Sasha was a tiny little baby with colic, my husband would fire up iTunes, iTunes visualizer, and some music and he would rock back and forth in front of the computer monitor. The combination of the music, iTunes visualizer, and the swaying would mesmerize Sasha into a state of calmness. She would lay her head on his shoulder, snuggle in comfortably, stare at the iTunes visualizer, and her eyes would gradually get heavier and heavier until she was limp and asleep. It became a special bonding ritual between Sasha and my husband.

But alas, he had hurt his back. We think it was a few too many times bent over the changing table for him, combined with moving an entertainment center. The back injury made "Daddy Dance" painfully impossible and it slowly dwindled away.
Sasha still seemed to show a fascination with all the old Daddy Dance songs even though it's been a long time. To our amazement, the voice of Sarah McLachlan still made Sasha stop dead in her tracks to listen, as if she could almost remember it. She's been happy and cheerful and dancing lately, and so we thought we'd try to bring back the Daddy Dance. We hooked the speakers back up to the computers, dusted off the old special Sasha playlists, and she remembers!

Daddy Dance still has the same mesmerizing, calming effect on Sasha that it used to when she was a little infant. She zones out at the visualizer and slowly drifts off to sleep. I'm so glad to see this ritual return, and I think her Dad is too :)

First Steps

Walking from Mom to Dad.

And walking from Dad to Mom.

She's still only walking very short distances but she thinks it's an incredibly fun game. Back and forth between Mom & Dad. Today, she started walking to objects. Like she just stood straight up and started walking to her Intellitable toy today, at least four feet away! So she's starting to understand she can walk to get to places. I think maybe by the end of the week, we'll have a real walker on our hands. Things should get interesting!
Meanwhile, Sasha has been in a great mood lately. She's been a real joy to be around and lots of fun to play with.

First Steps

Sasha baby took her first steps for her Daddy four different times yesterday!
Although each time she walked, she only walked maybe 2-4 steps each time but it's a start. I don't think she'll be sprinting down the street quite yet but you never know sometimes.
She had pulled herself up to a standing position by clinging to her dad. Once she was standing comfortably, she let go of him. My husband decided to take a step or two back away from her and she was standing on her own. Once she realized she was standing alone away from him, she took the two to four steps required to get back over to him and grabbed him. So I guess she just might be capable if given the proper motivation.

Sasha's Birthday Festivities!

Saturday night, we celebrated baby Sasha's first birthday (and Grandma Carol's birthday too)!
First, Sasha opened her birthday presents. From her parents, she got a toy called a ball popper, and a toy boat for the bathtub. Grandma Carol got Sasha a toy Winnie-the-Pooh book and a Speak'n'Say toy.

After the presents, it was time for cake! Dressed in just a diaper, we put Sasha in her decorated high chair and tried to put a bib on her. She HATED the bib and cried until I took it off. So fine, we went bib-less. We lit the candle on the cakes, lit the candles, and sang Happy Birthday twice, once for Sasha and once for Carol. I gave Sasha her little cake, and we ate cake and ice cream.
At first, Sasha was very timid with her cake. She poked it suspiciously with a single finger for a while but it didn't seem like she would do much with it. She did try to feed it to her father. Once she was given a spoon, however, she really started digging in! She made a wonderful mess, ate lots of cake, and really seemed to like it. It was a lot of fun. When she was done, we gave her a kazoo to play with since she seemed interested in the ones Cassie and I were playing with.
After her cake, it was bath time! She got all cleaned up and then I got to snuggle with a clean, happy baby. Sasha gave her grandma some very sweet kisses and her grandma was smitten.

Here is a slideshow of her birthday festivities: here

Birthday Weekend

We're back! We had a great weekend with all the birthday festivities.
We managed to get the house mostly deep cleaned on Friday. It feels really good to have a nice clean house. Then Friday night, my husband picked his mother up from the airport and she spent the weekend with us.
We celebrated the birthdays for Sasha and my mother-in-law Carol on Saturday, even though their birthdays technically were on Friday. Carol arrived in town late at night on Friday so that was best. Saturday we baked the birthday cakes and went out to breakfast at a local waffle house. Then we browsed around at Ikea. Carol gave us an early Christmas present- a new couch! That was very sweet. She also got us all new bedsheets and blankets. She has a talent for decorating so the sets she put together for us were very nice, not to mention comfortable too.
When we got back home, we did the cake decorations and it was time to do some birthday celebrating! After the presents and cake (a whole post will be dedicated to that in detail), Sasha had a well-needed bath. She was very affectionate that evening and lavished us all with lots of hugs, snuggles, and kisses. She gave her Grandma Carol a huge kiss. After Sasha came down from her birthday cake induced sugar high, we all went to bed.
Sunday, we went to the mall and ate at Ruby Tuesdays. We got Cassie some new shoes. Grandma spoiled Sasha with some cute outfits from Hanna Anderson.
Monday, Cassie was back to school, and Carol's flight left in the afternoon. We took her out to Baker's Square for lunch and when we went back home, Carol went through a lot of our digital photos so we could print them out for her to take home.

Virgo Baby

I figured I was going to do it someday. After all, the name of the blog is "Virgo Baby" right? So what is it that makes MY Virgo baby such a virgo?
Well, first what exactly is a virgo baby? A birthday between August 23rd to September 22nd for starters.
I have an astrology book. Several of them actually. I've always found it interesting how people really do seem to fit their astrological signs. So this one book I have is called "Zodiac Baby: An Astrological Guide to Your Little Star", written by Sarah Bartlett. It's a very cute book. I think I got it at Barnes and Noble. I hope the author doesn't mind if I quote a little section of it because I do recommend her book :)

Virgo Babies:
Why I'm adorable:
- I like to look cute and stay clean all the time
- I'm helpful, kind, and care about animals
- Once I can talk, I say fascinating and funny things
Why I'm impossible
- I'm a very fussy eater
- My organized chaos drives you mad
- I'm very sensitive to noise, pollution, and smells
My Secret Side
- I'm very smart and quick to psych you out
- Give me a routine and I'll thrive
- I prefer the company of grown-ups
I like
- Brand new sheets and clothes
- Looking after my imaginary friends
- Learning new things every day
- Keeping my books in order
I don't like
- Noisy people
- Changes in routine
- Dirty fingernails
- People staring at me

Another source of information on what, exactly, are Virgo baby traits, is http://www.bellybelly.com.au/articles/astrology/virgo-baby. I'll excerpt a bit from that source:
"Virgo – Heaven’s Little Helpers
You’ve got a little Worrier in the making here, so from Day One make a vow not to put too much of a burden on these little shoulders. You won’t have to discipline this little angel too much, for they’ll do it for themselves.

Virgo is the most responsible of all the signs, taking a lot of life’s burdens and responsibilities on their own shoulders and feeling a lot of guilt. Although this won’t really manifest until they are grown, you’ll find that even at a very young age they’ll worry about you, their brothers and sisters, the cat, the dog, grandma, anyone and anything to them....

They are born with a feeling of urgency and if they don’t feel productive, or busy, they get a sense that something is wrong.

By the time your little Virgo is full grown, they’ll be fanatical about pulling their weight.

To stop your little Virgo worrying so much, about the little things, realise that you have one of Heaven’s Helpers here. As soon as they’re old enough, let them help around the house, but don’t make it a chore, or they’ll feel even more responsible. You’re most likely to have a happy little Virgo if you make them feel important and that they are such a big help to Mummy or Daddy, that what would we do without them? Simple jobs will make them happy. They love to feel needed.

There are plenty more virgo baby traits than those listed above. They like things quiet, calm, orderly, and routine. They are discriminating, picky, organized, hard workers, very smart. They are shy and easily upset by strangers but sweet and helpful. They are very sensitive to noises, smells, and thus are difficult babies to put to sleep at night. Every little sound wakes a virgo baby. Virgo babies are picky eaters; weaning a virgo baby may take extra patience and understanding because she's disturbed by change. Virgo babies like their diapers and clothes clean and enjoy simple colors and fabrics. They like books and bookstores. They enjoy games of tidying! They are shy and wary of strangers. They like things to be perfect and like to point out imperfections (Mine loves to pick up carpet lint and hand it to me!).


My Sasha dear is a very typical Virgo Baby. She is very cautious and shy. She loves to watch strangers so long as they are busy, distant, and not trying to interact with her. But the moment a stranger tries to interact with her, she will either hide her face away in shyness or she will start to cry and bury her face in her parent's shoulders.
She is VERY affectionate. She has an endless supply of hugs, snuggles, and big wet face sucking kisses for those close family members that she loves. It's not only the affection that makes her so sweet though. She is very caring and thoughtful and intuitive, especially for someone so young. She gets upset if she thinks something is wrong with her daddy or if he hurts himself. She gets very concerned for us when she thinks something is wrong and tries to make him feel better. She is empathetic and tries to soothe us if she thinks we need it. On more than one occasion, she has taken my face into her little hands, looked me deeply in the eyes, and rubbed my cheek and forehead to comfort me when I was upset about something.

She loves anything to do with organizing or cleaning! The poor girl is a born neat freak among slobs. One of her early favorite toys? A squeegee. She loves to play with pots and pans and cooking utensils. She loves brooms, dust pans, mops. More than her toys of course.

She loves it when I hold her and vacuum at the same time. Earlier this week, as I was holding her and vacuuming, she went into this sort of reverie. She was happily watching every single vacuuming stroke and studying. Eventually she started pointing out spots I missed and would squeak annoyedly until I went back and got the messy spot for her. THEN my husband walked in front of our vacuuming path. She got mad and started yelling at him and gesturing for him to get out of the way! No "yay I'm happy to see you daddy"...just "get out of the way dada we're vacuuming", haha!
She's always hated a dirty diaper, even when she was a very tiny baby. She'd cry worse than hunger if her diaper got wet and cold. I know by comparison that my older daughter, a gemini, never ever cared if her diaper was messy. My gemini baby hated the interruptions that diaper changing time brought her because she was always too busy with something else.
Sasha is high maintenance. By this I mean that she requires constant companionship and company. She does not like to leave our side, nor does she like it if we leave her side. Nor does she like it if she is not the center of our attention, except if we are cleaning and she can supervise. Rare is the moment when she will happily play by herself and allow us to check our email or computer. Sitting down at our computer desk is guaranteed to throw her into a temper tantrum.

Happy Birthday Baby!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY SASHA!
Today, we celebrate our beloved daughter's first birthday. I can't believe it's been a year. To think a year ago today, I was uncomfortable and in pain, yet excited to meet the little new member of our family. I was dying of curiosity to know what she would look like, how she would be, whether we would bond. Once I had her in my arms I fell in love and couldn't let go. I was mesmerized by her perfect little nose, ears, fingers, toes, and that thick head of hair she had.
We've spent countless hours snuggled together. Nursing, sleeping, just carrying her around. I treasured every moment. Even when she was colicky and crying, we loved her and made great memories that will stay in my heart forever. Someday, when Sasha is a sassy teen giving me attitude, memories of "daddy dance" and "peek-a-boo" will bring me through.
I love you baby Sasha! I am so grateful that you are healthy. I love seeing your little personality emerge more each day and watching you grow. I know that your babyhood and childhood will pass by in what seems like the blink of an eye so I want to treasure every moment. I remind myself to enjoy every moment as you are growing so fast. Next thing I know you'll be an adult on your own. I hope that I can be a good parent to you and I can remember that my true purpose as a parent is to raise you to be a happy and successful adult.