A Chihuahua is NOT a dog...

Or so says baby Sasha.
My husband and Sasha walked over to the local 7Eleven. Along the way they saw someone walking their chihuahua. We have a lot of dogs in our apartment complex. Whenever Sasha sees a dog, she usually gets all excited, points at it, makes little barking noises, and does the sign language for dog. She saw the chihuahua, but she didn't really react like she normally does with a dog. So my husband told her, "Look Sasha, a dog!". He pointed at it and did the sign language for 'dog'.
Sasha looked at the chihuahua, looked up at my husband with her best 'Are you on crack?' expression on her face, and vehemently shook her head no. My husband tried several times to tell her that it was a dog but she maintained her stance that no, the chihuahua was NOT a dog.
Personally, I tend to agree with her. :)
Signing babies are so cute.

Grandma is coming!

There will be MUCH celebration next weekend...my mother in law (Sasha's grandma and namesake) is coming to town!
Sasha's middle name is Carol, named after her Grandma Carol. Sasha and her Grandma Carol share the same birthday. As a matter of fact, Sasha was the perfect birthday present for her grandmother's 50th birthday last year. My husband decided last year that he would like it to be tradition for Sasha and Grandma Carol to spend their birthday together each year somehow.
This is great news.
We'll get to do a real celebration. Now I have to decide what kind of cake to make.

Babyproofing

As you can tell from a few posts back where I showed a picture of baby Sasha gleefully playing in my kitchen cupboards, I'm a little behind on the babyproofing. We have those little plug thingies that plug into electrical plugs. I got those as soon as I saw Sasha eyeing up the electrical outlets. But otherwise our baby proofing strategy mostly involved us following the baby around everywhere chanting "Sasha No!".
Well, the carpets in our apartment had been in hideous conditions from a few too many spilled iced teas and the fact that we've lived in that apartment almost two years without any carpet shampooing. My husband had been begging for a carpet shampooer (that word doesn't look right) and he finally bought us one the other day. He immediately shampooed the carpets and the whole house just looks and feels magnitudes cleaner and fresher. Why am I on a tangent about carpets in a post about babyproofing? Well he had to move all the furniture around to shampoo the carpets, and in doing so we decided to rearrange the furniture. The new furniture configuration looks nice and makes it easier to keep an eye on the baby. Suddenly watching her seemed less stressful. There was much less for her to get her hands on and less trouble for her to get into.
Today I went to the store and got a baby gate to block the kitchen off. And baby watching again became so much easier. I wish we would have gone and done this sooner. Tonight Jon made chili for dinner, and Sasha happily stood at the baby gate to watch him as he cooked. It was so nice to not have to worry about her getting into anything. It felt so nice and safe.
We are still in a cleaning and rearranging frenzy. The more work we put into it, the more we feel like doing. I really like the results so far.

Less than one week...

Less than a week to go until Sasha's first birthday. I wish we had family around to do a full-scale party or something. Anyways I'm trying to plan what to do to celebrate the occasion.
Sasha's party will be just Sasha, her mommy, her daddy, and her big sister. (Unless happy of all happy occasions happens and my parents or mother-in-law comes from out of town to celebrate, but it's such short notice now that I'm afraid maybe that probably won't happen.) I think that I will make some cupcakes and maybe decorate Sasha's high chair. And balloons, I think she'd love some balloons. I was looking around online at party supply websites and was thinking of maybe doing something like this:

It's called "The Big One Girl High Chair Kit", and it is a high chair kit that contains a bib, hat, a flag banner to tape to the high chair tray, and a mat to put under the high chair. Sounds exactly like what I need.
My husband says he remembers his first birthday. I have memories of my first birthday also. (I remember my parents wanting me to make a mess out of my birthday cake so they could take a picture, but I didn't want to get messy so they smeared frosting on me to make me messy. I got so mad!) Knowing there's the possibility that she could actually remember her first birthday party makes me wish I could do something a little more... memorable. If we did have some family around I'd have a nice bigger, more grandiose party for her first...and of course there would be presents.
As far as presents go, I haven't gotten her anything yet. I've been eyeing the Fisher Price Laugh & Learn: Learning Home:

It looks like it would flatten out to store away when it's not in use, which would be nice as we are low in living space. It also looks like it could entertain a kid with something for every age for the next few years, not like something that would only hold a one year old's attention for a short time. Unfortunately that gadget costs $60 and I don't really have that much money to spend right now. Thank goodness her birthday falls on payday.
I have been drooling over the toys at http://www.uniquewoodentoys.com/. If I had the money and forethought, I would have loved to get Sasha one of the doll house sets or maybe one of their busy boxes or their pirate ship sets. YARRRRR! Toys that even an adult could have fun with. I just don't have that kind of money as their stuff is expensive.
So far, Sasha has received birthday presents from my parents, and from one of my husband's family members. My parents got her a LeapFrog Little Touch LeapPad, which comes with some books and it reads them to the baby and makes sound effects. Sasha likes to play with it with me. Sasha got a package in the mail with some nice clothes from my husband's step-father (mom and big sister got some comfy sweat shirts in the same package!)
Best birthday present of all would be her Grandma Carol. I HOPE that she can come out here. I really really do.

Signing and Language Explosion

I took two days of vacation, which gave me a four day weekend. I got to spend nearly every second of it with my little Sasha.
At first I noticed that she was very sleepy. She slept a lot more than usual. When this happens, it usually means one of two things. Either a growth spurt (which is usually accompanied by a huge baby appetite), or she is about to suddenly have some new major ability. She wasn't especially hungry so I figured she was going to learn something neat.
And she did! Suddenly one day, she was a signing baby. All those signs I've spent her whole life teaching her, she just suddenly started using. All in the same day! It was amazing. I spent the whole day nearly drop-jawed. My baby was talking to me. She's done a few of the signs before. But usually only for a day or so and not necessarily in the right context, and then she stopped. This seems different.
In her sleep, she would start to stir and whine, and signed "eat" without even opening her eyes. I'd feed her and she'd happily doze back off to sleep. She signed "more" when she wanted more of anything. She signed "eat" when she was hungry, and I didn't even know she was hungry yet because she hadn't even started fussing or whining yet. She signed "dog" when she saw a dog in the lobby of our building. She signed "light" when she was staring at our lights (LOVES lights, it's her obsession). She also said "ite" when she was pointing at the light and signing 'light'. She verbally says "muh muh muh" when she signs more, sort of like the word more without the r sound in it. She says "Duh" for dog. She squeals "DADA!!!" really loud when she wants my husband's attention. Her other obsession is our blue indiglo alarm clock...she smiles and gets excited whenever she sees it. Now she says "ock! ock! ock!" when she sees the clock and points at it. I wish I knew the sign for clock so I could teach it to her.

Cassie was at my parent's house for Labor Day and Sasha missed her. How I know? Well Sasha pointed at the computer chair where Cassie is normally sitting, yelled "EH!" (her name for her sister) and signed "sister" which is what we taught her to sign for Cassie. She kept pointing staring at Cassie's chair looking for her.
Sasha has a little dog stuffed animal, and when I play with her sometimes I pretend it's a real dog. I make it bark at her and lick her and jump around. Now she likes to grab the dog and bark and make it jump around too. It's very cute.

Basically, it just seems like something clicked in her mind and the language light switch just turned on. Watching a child grow from a helpless little infant into a real person is just incredible and it was weekends like this that amaze me.

Baby Feeding Woes

Above: Sasha suspiciously examines some spaghetti noodles. She opted to just throw them on the floor.

Some of this baby stuff is not what I expected, especially when it comes to Sasha's eating.
The way I had imagined it:
-Nurse baby exclusively until she turns 6 months old, then wean after 1 year
-Pump at work and baby takes bottle of pumped milk while I'm gone
-Make homemade baby food and baby is so happy at all the yummy tastes that she develops a complex palate and appreciation for all the fresh and healthy foods
-Baby gradually eats more and more foods until she self weans
-Baby starts drinking whole cows milk from a sippy cup at 11 months replacing the milk she usually drinks while I'm at work

Reality:
-Won't take a bottle of anything
-Fights food and feeding time, hardly eats anything but fresh peaches and a few cheerios
-Insists on breastfeeding and getting milk directly from the source, refuses pumped milk
-Shows more interest in eating bottle caps, pennies, and carpet lint than in baby food
-Is more interested in dumping out the contents of her sippy cup than drinking it

In the beginning, all was well. Sasha was eating well, nursing well, taking her bottles, and seemed to understand the sippy cup concept. Now that is no longer the case.
A few months back I found that there was something wrong with my pumped milk. Sasha started refusing all bottles of pumped milk, so started the headache of having to either run home from work to feed her, or having the baby delivered to my work for a feeding. It's a bit of a pain. Thankfully my work is very supportive of me...for now. But Sasha is about to turn a year old and I get the feeling they expect for me to start weaning her soon, at least from work feedings. So somehow I have to figure out how to switch her over to cows milk very soon at least while I'm at work. I have no idea how to do this.
She is pretty much refusing all other sources of fluid intake. She's known how to drink from a sippy cup since she was 6 months old...but she just doesn't want to. She is really good at refusing everything. She turns her face away from solids feedings. I don't want to turn feedings into power struggles or fights so what's a mom to do? Right now she lives on breastmilk, a small baby-size handful of cheerios, and maybe an ounce of peach baby food a day. I worry that it is not enough, and I worry that the stress of weaning her work feedings is going to be too much to endure. My husband has been very stressed taking care of her lately and weaning the work feedings is going to seriously intensify that stress level.
Ugh, well there's my problem. I don't know the solution yet but we'll see.

Present for you!

Sasha has fun with a diaper box.

Took this on my camera phone and had to post :)

Standing game captured on film

I finally got some pictures of Sasha doing that little standing game she's been doing lately. I went back to one of the older posts here about the standing game she likes to play and attached a pic to that too.
Notice the little tongue hanging sticking out of Sasha's mouth in the picture above? For some strange reason, Sasha has been doing that a lot lately. No idea why. She used to do that for a day or so whenever she got a new tooth and was getting used to it being in her mouth. But I double checked and no new teeth or anything. She just likes to stick her tongue out a lot I guess. It looks cute to me, like she's really thinking deeply.
She's got some heavy motivation in this pic...daddy's glasses. She loves to rip the glasses off his face and play with them.

I forgot to mention the other day that Sasha said a new word the other day: light. She has a thing for lights, led's, blinky things, or anything that illuminates. She was sitting in my lap pointing at the lights in the living room. I said "light" to her a few times and clear as a bell she pointed to the lights and said "light".
She's also been signing more and eat a lot more lately. Tonight, she saw my husband drinking a pepsi. She was staring at it and started signing "eat". She wanted a sip. I think it was pretty cool that she was able to actually request what she wanted by using sign language.

New Standing Record

Sasha's current record for standing without holding on to anything is now 61 seconds. I saw it myself this time. She still plays her standing game many times a day. It seems to be one of her favorite pasttimes. Of course, she waits for her cheers and applause, and she cheers for herself, claps, and says "yay!".
She also accidentally took her first steps yesterday. She was holding on to a toy, and I think the toy in her hand gave her a false sense of holding on to something. Once she realized she was not in fact holding on to anything for support she sat down. She only took about two steps. She's still got a bit before she's walking I'm sure.

My husband told me a cute Sasha story today. She loves to try to put random objects in our mouths sometimes. She decided to try to shove the handle of one of her teething toys into his mouth but she was not satisfied with how far it went in his mouth. A panicked look came across her face. She looked around the room frantically. She saw a wooden block nearby, picked it up, and pounded the toy with it to try to hammer the teething toy further down his mouth. Wonder what she was thinking. She certainly thought she was being helpful.

Cassie likes to play Dance Dance Revolution on her playstation. She's really good at it and it's good exercise too. Sasha used to like to watch Cassie play it. But now she's no longer content to be just a spectator. She wants to try to play it herself too. Today I had a hard time keeping a very determined Sasha off the dance pad so her big sister could play. She almost got stepped on a few times.

Pigtails!

Sasha: Too cute!
Hehe, I love her little pigtails. She gets lots of comments and complements whenever we go out with her hair like this. I think they are adorable too. But functional, as well. Her hair is long enough that it keeps getting into her eyes. I don't want to cut it yet but I can tell that she finds hair in her eyes irritating. So for the last month or so I've been putting her hair up. Sometimes I put it back with a barette. Other times I put it in a ponytail up at the top of her head and it sticks straight up in the air. Then there are her little antennae pigtails like in the picture above. She won't really let me play with her hair except when she is in the bathtub, distracted with her bath toys. So that's when I put her hair up.

Here, you hold this!
I think Cassie took this picture and it makes me laugh. The expression on Sasha's face is amusing. It looks like Sasha is being robbed of her ball at camera-point or something but I can assure you she is not.
Cassie took this photo and photoshopped the ball into a grenade. I didn't post that pic here but it looked pretty funny.

Cassie's first day of school

Nothing much new lately. Sasha is still practicing trying to stand. My husband has let it be known that her current record for standing is 21 seconds. However I don't think I've seen her go longer than 10 seconds myself.

Cassie started her first day of school today. I tried to send her to school a day early but they wouldn't take her. Ok, I didn't mean to send her a day early. I really did think school started on the 22nd but apparently the 22nd was for seventh graders only. Poor Cassie was a little embarassed. She was all dressed up in her first day of school best and ready to go. I had made her a bento lunch and she went out to the bus stop. The bus driver came to pick up the kids from the bus stop and told her that school was only for seventh graders that day. I was very surprised to hear the doorbell ring and have Cassie come right back after I had just sent her out. Oh well.
So yeah she had her real first day of school today. She came home and said she made two new friends, which makes me very happy as Cassie is a shy girl. She didn't really have many friends last year. She was mostly a loner.

The other day we got Cassie her 'dream bed' for her bedroom. It is really neat. It's called a loft bed. I know I would have loved to have a bed like that when I was a kid. It's sort of like a bunk bed. But there is no bottom bunk. Instead we put a desk and lamp and bookcase under the bed so she has like a little "office". She tells me many times daily how much she loves her new bed and gives us lots of thanks. Cassie and I love the black and white look the bed has. It looks more her style than the wooden or metal loft beds. For now she has a black computer desk set up under the bed along with a light colored wooden bookcase and a tv tray table.

Here we have Cassie and my husband assembling her new bed in her room.

A Great Performance

I have learned about a month or so ago that babies LOVE applause. Of course we all do, but babies will automatically assume that all applause is for them and will unabashedly bask in the glow of it. Back in July, in a room full of babies, I applauded a baby and said "YAY!". Every single baby stopped dead in their tracks and beamed as if I was applauding for them. Even the canned applause on television is greeted with a big proud grin by a baby. Applause is a very potent tool in the baby playing and training arsenal.
Sasha, like all babies, LOVES applause. She is a great cruiser, walks around the whole house so long as she has something to hang on to but on occasion she will just stop and balance herself and let go. About a week back, Sasha was practicing her new standing without holding on to anything trick and I gave her a rousing round of applause.
So now the routine basically goes like this: She stands holding on to my leg or a table. She lets go with her hands and puts them half-way up in the air, balances standing for a second, looks at me as if to say "LOOK MA NO HANDS!" then falls on her butt. Next she gets a big proud grin on her face and that expectant "Where is my applause?" look on her face. (If she doesn't get it? That's no problem. She will just applaud herself and say "YAY!" anyways.) She'll pause for a bit to bask in the glow of her applause and then she'll pull herself back up to a stand again to repeat. She repeats this about 5-10 times.
The past few days, she will ask for applause without any accomplishment. She'll just say "YAY!" and start clapping and usually her father and I will copy her. Perhaps I should save the applause for her tricks.

OMG Not Teething!

Sasha's been in a great mood the past few days. For the first time in a long time she is not teething!
I may have mentioned this before, but my two girls have had two completely different teething styles. Pardon me if I express a preference for the way Cassie went through her teething process.
Cassie dear had not a single tooth in her mouth for the first 13 months of her life. I know this is very strange. She was my little toothless wonder, walking and talking before she even got a tooth. I loved that gummy little baby grin. But then she went through an OMGWTFBBQ mother-of-all teething period where she suddenly erupted 8 teeth at once. Poor baby. She was feverish and miserable but at least she got it all over with in one shot.
Sasha, on the other hand, seems to have been non-stop teething since she's been 3 months old. That's a bit of an exageration but it really feels true. Once the teething process for one tooth ends, another one begins and it feels like we're not getting any break. Sasha has a very pleasant disposition...when she isn't teething. But she is so irritable and crabby when she is teething. It feels like we've had an irritable baby for so long that we were worried that her personality was actually an irritable baby. So now that she is finally not teething, I am glad to see her old cheerful self back.
Whew!
I know it won't last long. She's got 7 teeth. That 8th tooth has to come in soon. I don't feel any bump in the spot where it should be coming in yet so nature has decided to give us a break to remember what our little girl's true personality is like.

Meanwhile, Sasha learned a new trick today. She figured out how to crawl off the bed. No easy task I can assure you as it seems so high up for a baby. I saw that she wanted to get off the bed today. I wanted to just pick her up and put her on the floor. It took a lot of effort to stand by and let her do it. I kept myself at the ready, prepared to grab her if she should fall or encounter any problems and let her figure things out. She crawled to the corner of the bed, put her hands on the bedframe at each side of the corner, then swung her legs over the side and landed on her feet. The whole process took about three minutes, very very slowly. I was so surprised that she did it but once it was done she didn't think it was a big deal. I really expected to have to grab her to save her from a fall.

Welcome Baby Madison

Sasha has a new baby cousin.
Baby Madison was born on August 16th at 2:45am at 4lbs5oz and 17 inches long. She is such a tiny tiny little girl but very healthy. She got an 8 and a 9 on her APGAR score. Her mommy got a bit of food poisoning which threw her into early labor but otherwise mommy and baby are fine.
So we went up north to go visit my family and see the new baby. Sasha was mostly disinterested but did stare at the baby with mild interest for a minute or two. Cassie and I got to hold the new baby. As I held her, it reminded me of what it was like to hold a newborn Sasha. My how she has grown in the past year and it is sort of bittersweet that it is all just a memory now.
While we were up there visiting family, we stayed at a hotel. Sasha and I slept very well as the bed was comfortable. I had wanted to take Sasha to the hotel swimming pool but we just didn't have the time or energy.

Despite the 11 month age difference, Sasha and her new cousin should be classmates as Sasha missed the birthday cut off for most schools, and Madison's birthday should put her in the same school year. Basically Sasha will be one of the oldest of her class one day and Madison will be one of the youngest. It would be so neat to see the two girls off together to kindergarten one day. But we shall see what the future has in store for us. 5 years seems so far away anyways.