Watch her grow

It seems like my baby has grown so much the past week or two that she doesn't even seem like the same baby she was last week. Her core personality is there, but more of it is revealed each day as she learns new abilities. I can't wait to see who this little person is going to be!

Mama's Girl
She's a mama's girl this week. She and I really have a good connection. We play together and have a lot of fun. I can read her every glance and expression and she is so communicative. She started saying "MAMA". At first it seemed so random but she's saying it more and with more intent. She's almost starting to seem like she understands that I am Mama.

Dada
Unfortunately, it seems like either Jon or I have a good connection to Sasha at any given time. So often, Sasha was a Daddy's girl. They could read each other, had their own special routines and games they played. And I was the odd parent out. But now the past two weeks or so, it seems to have shifted. As my connection to Sasha grows, their connection seems to be waning. I think I'd almost prefer that if Sasha can't be in tune with both of us at the same time, then I'd rather she be closer to Jon than to me. He's the one that has to stay with her all night while I'm at work.
But I don't want to just stop playing with her! I've been having so much fun with her! So he'll just have to step it up if he's going to get her favor back :)
I think we are both going to have to get used to the fact that she will probably bounce back and forth between us...that some times she'll love us both equally. But sometimes, she just might favor one of us over the other. And when that happens, we have to learn not to take it personal. She'll always come back to both of us eventually.

Assisted Walking
She loves her new-found favorite past-time of assisted walking. I hold her little hands and let her explore the house as she walks around. I let her turn her head to steer in the direction she wants to go, and I watch her gaze to see what captures her rapt attention. She walks around and explores everything. Bags of diapers, doors, Cassie's room, mirrors, carpet lint, and everything she happens to walk past. It is almost like a preview of the toddler she will become, when she will walk around the house and get into everything.
I still can't get over how well she is sitting. It seemed like it happened over night. One day, I would sit her up and if I wasn't holding her or propping her up she would topple over. Then the next day, she was sitting on her own for hours with no assistance at all! What gets me is she looks like such a big girl sitting there on her own, playing with her toys.

Separation Anxiety
This is the beginning of separation anxiety. If she sees me leave the house, she gets mad! Today, she watched me leave for work and threw a two hour temper tantrum. I eventually had to leave work to go home and calm her down. (Fortunately I live a block away from work, and they are fine with me running home to nurse her when I need to.) This gave my poor husband a headache and I think it hurt his feelings a little. He had to listen to her cry for the whole two hours, and none of his usual Daddy-tricks worked to calm her down.

Working on that Sleep Schedule
We decided to try to work on Sasha's sleep schedule. Specifically, we want her back on a night shift schedule with me. It was so much easier on the whole household when she was cosleeping with me during the day. We all got sleep. And well rested parents are good for kids :)
So far, we've almost got her migrated. I'd say we're half-way there. Instead of sleeping most of the time I'm at work, she's sleeping half of it. I can imagine how hard it must be for my husband to have to try to keep her awake all night so that she will be ready to sleep during the day. I know it can't be easy.

Angle the spoon

I discovered a strange trick to feeding my baby girl. And it's so strange, because after I discovered it, I realized that I had long ago found the same to be true with my first daughter 12 years ago. If there wasn't such a long age gap between my girls, I might have actually remembered the trick and wouldn't have had to reinvent the wheel.
I had been having troubles feeding Sasha. When I offered a spoon full of food, she would clamp her mouth shut and shake her head back and forth. I figured she just wasn't taking to solids after that two week gap where we stopped feeding her everything but breastmilk. I was afraid she had forgotten how to eat.
Of course, she still loved to play with her spoon, and if I put some food on her spoon, I had a 10 percent chance of her feeding it to herself before she splattered it everywhere. That gave me the epiphany: she didn't like it when I offered her a spoonful of food straight on. I tried to offer her a spoon of food at an angle off to her right side and her mouth opened up like a baby birdy.
So if I offer her food head-on/straight-on, she will close her mouth as tight as Fort Knox. But a spoon offered at an angle to her right side makes her readily gobble her food down.
This is so strange. Now she eats great!

Fussy baby

Sasha has been a little more crabby than usual lately. I wish she could tell me what is troubling her. I'm trying to guess if she is teething or if she has a stomach upset or maybe her bowels are troubling her. We've noticed the last few weeks that Sasha goes from happy camper to screaming rabid baby in a moments notice when she gets hungry, which seems so strange to me. Like how can you suddenly get instantly hungry? In the past, when she suddenly started crying, hunger was the last thing I'd guess because hunger is normally one of those things that slowly creeps up on you. Oh well, just one of those curious things. It just seems so weird to see a baby go from giggling happy playing to "FEED ME NOW MINION! I AM HUNGRY," in two seconds flat.

We've been playing with the moby wrap some more and Sasha and I both like it a lot. Yesterday, Sasha became unconsolably fussy. All our usual tricks were not working. I put on the Moby Wrap and snuggled her in it facing me, and she instantly calmed down. I found that sort of strange, as I had been carrying her around and that didn't calm her down any. I didn't see much difference in carrying her around snuggled close to me, or carrying her around wrapped in the moby wrap snuggled close. But it did make a difference so I guess I'm going to have to think about getting one.

I feel bad that something is bothering Sasha and I can't fix it. I can tell that she is in some sort of discomfort. She can sometimes be distracted from whatever is bothering her. For now, I try to keep her mentally distracted with play. Sometimes that's enough to take her mind off of whatver is bugging her. And I try not to get frustrated when it's not enough.

It's like christmas!

The Happy Baby website has a baby carrier loan program that I decided to try out. I am so glad I did! The way the program works is they mail you four types of baby carriers, which you can use and test out for 14 days, then you mail them back. There are so many different types of carriers out there, and you never know which type will agree with you until you try it out. But they are so costly to just outright buy them to try them out so I love the idea of the loan program.
I already have a baby bjorn and a snugli. The snugli carrier was terrible; it felt like I was hanging the baby around my neck on a necklace. All of the weight of the baby was pulling my neck down. The baby bjorn was much better but now that Sasha is getting bigger I'm starting to fatigue easier. The other problem I have with the bjorn is that I am short with short arms. I had always thought that I could run around the house and clean with Sasha in the baby carrier. Hard to explain but for example: if I want to do dishes while wearing Sasha, I can't reach the dishwater without her back hitting the sink. So I would really like to find something that distributes her weight more, that will allow me multiple carry methods (to do housework), and something that can grow with her.
I received a package today with four types of baby carriers and tested them out on a very willing Sasha. There was a ring sling, a mei tei, a pouch style carrier, and a moby wrap (long piece of fabric that you tie).
I just could not get the hang of the ring sling. It was too hard for me to adjust and Sasha seemed like she was just going to flop right out. So that was a no-go right away.
I tried the pouch carrier next, and although I think I have the wrong size (too small), it seemed okay. I could only use the hip carry but Sasha seemed to love it and Cassie remarked that Sasha seemed comfortable in it. But I could only use one hand while holding Sasha in the hip carry and the pouch was too small for me to try any other carry in it. Perhaps if I had the right size I could test it out properly.
I tried to figure out the mei tei and I lost my patience with it. It looks like it could carry Sasha on my back pretty easily, which would be neat if I could figure it out. It also looks like it folds up nice and small so it would fit in our diaper bag easily. I like that. Honestly, I need to retry it when I have more patience and maybe some better instructions.
Lastly, I tried the Moby wrap, and that worked so well! Sasha was so snug and comfortable. I tested out the nursing position, and she nursed herself to sleep right away. Our testing stopped for little bit while she slept. Moving about the house did not wake her. It looked like Sasha and I were both very comfortable with it. When she woke we tried some other moby wrap positions. I took her for a walk to the local 7eleven and Sasha's weight was so well distributed that it didn't feel like I was carrying any additional weight. I could easily carry Sasha around all day with no fatigue if she wanted. I have not been able to try the back carry. The back carry with this carrier type does require the assistance of someone else to get the baby tied in properly.
Anyways, I am very happy with the Moby wrap. I had such fun trying out the different carrier types. It felt like Christmas. Sasha seemed to enjoy also. She was very content in the pouch and moby wrap and she didn't mind the other carriers either. She's such a mellow baby.
I get to play with the carriers for 14 days. It should be fun.

She blew up!

Sasha has been making up for those 7 days of empty diapers, which we knew she would. Unfortunately, we had an incident that was quite upsetting for both me and Sasha.
We went to Red Robin for dinner. We forgot to bring the bumbo seat, and Sasha sat nicely in a high chair for the whole meal which is a first for her. After dinner, we decided to go for a stroll around the mall. As we exited the restaurant into the mall, I noticed she smelled funny but she had been really gassy so I assumed it was gas. Then as we walked down the mall, I casually happened to glance down as Sasha was squirming in my arms and Oh My God my sleeve was full of baby poo. I had some on my shirt and there was some on her cute little outfit. We quickly returned to the restaurant to use their restroom.
Needless to say, cleaning her up in one of those stupid baby changing tables at the restaurant was traumatic. Sasha always gets upset in foreign changing stations and screamed bloody murder the whole time she was in it. It was too high up for me to work comfortably and was over the toilet. The more I tried to clean her up, the more mess I made. I can not convey in words just how much of a mess it was. I wanted to just throw myself to the ground and cry but I knew that wouldn't accomplish anything so why bother. Cassie was so helpful. She fetched me paper towels and whatever I needed. At some point, I realized the situation required a trash bag so Cassie got a trash bag from the restaurant staff.
Sasha still seems to be mad at me for that whole incident. She cries if I try to change her diaper but she never liked it when I changed her diaper anyways. I try not to take it personal but it does sting a little. The first few times Dad changed her diaper she cried and I think that hurt his feelings, but she seems to be warming up so long as I am not in her sight. I do feel bad that she had such a bad experience but I don't know that I could have done any better than I did. I know in my heart I gave it the best I could.
Poor baby. Now I just have to get this fear out of my head that she is going to explode on me any time we leave the house with her. She's like a ticking pooping time bomb and I never know when she's going to go off or if I'll be prepared for the next explosion. I hope we don't have to go through this ever again.

Crazy Baby Demon Voice

A few days back, Sasha's Daddy taught her how to growl. It was so cute. She started growling and it was just adorable. It made us all laugh. Then she started talking in this weird demon baby voice. Her cute little voice she used to use when she said "Dada" was replaced by a deep growly voice. All day yesterday, she was growling and using her growl voice.
It's funny, but I admit I miss the cute little baby voice.

So Affectionate

One of the things about having two kids is the ability to compare their personalities. Well, not only with my own kids, but I can compare Sasha's personality to other babies I've been close with such as neices and nephews. One thing that stands out to me is how genuinely affectionate Sasha is.
Cassie was not really an affectionate baby. More of a "look at me!" baby, she preferred praise and attention to what she was doing. Affection was something she endured and not very well. Most of the times if I or someone hugged or kissed her, she would squirm away, push them away, or turn away. She didn't willingly give affection as a little one unless she was commanded or requested to, like "Give mommy a kiss", then she would do so for the praise she received or for the accomplishment of it. But most of the time it wasn't genuine affection. I know she loved me in her own way, she just wasn't a huggy kissy child. It wasn't displayed physically.
Sasha, by contrast, is so affectionate. Once in a while she gets this look on her face with full eye contact, and she'll just grab Jon or I by the head, pull our face to her, and give us this huge face biting smushy-faced kiss to the cheek that lasts for like 15 seconds. She does it to me more than Jon but that's mostly because his face is more stubbly than mine, but when he's smooth and clean shaven he gets his fair share of baby face-sucking kisses.
Then there's the times when she's sitting nicely on the ground playing. I pick her up when she's starting to get bored, and I am rewarded with a big snuggly hug...one of those hugs where you can see it in her whole body. She throws her arms around my neck and burrows her face into the crook of my neck. She shakes her head back and forth to burrow her face deeper into the folds of my neck and hugs for dear life. It's like she's saying "I'm so glad to see you" with all she has. It's not just the hugs and kisses. She enjoys being held or being close to those she loves.
All babies love their parents. Just some personalities show their affection in different ways than others. Of all the babies I've seen, Sasha displays more affectionately than any baby I've ever known.
And she's also a bit more sympathetic/empathetic too. Jon has remarked many times how Sasha looks at him with such concern when he seems to be hurt, has a headache, or just isn't feeling well. She seems to read it on him better than anyone. She KNOWS when her daddy isn't feeling right and she doesn't like it. She'll either try to make him feel better or it will upset her. It's interesting how Sasha and Jon are very in tune with each other.

All stopped up :(

Part of being a parent is keeping track of baby poo. It's in the job description.

A few days ago, I posted that poor Sasha hasn't filled her diaper with anything solid lately. Well, she still hasn't and she has her parents worried. It's been about 7 days now. I called her pediatrician's office yesterday and asked for advice. They recommended I take her temperature rectally to get things moving and that I make her drink prune juice.
Well, she stopped eating solids about 4 days ago. She would NOT have anything to do with prune juice. Their thermometer trick did not produce any results. And still we have empty diapers. I worry because her milk consumption has also declined and that caused my milk production to start to decline. And I also worry that now that Sasha has started to refuse to eat solids, that we might experience a problem with her eating solids even after she finally fills a diaper.
So today I called the pediatrician and asked for more advice. They asked me if I could have her in the office within the next 30 minutes. Gotta love our pediatrician's office! 30 minutes later, we were in their waiting room. There was a cute set of 11 month old girl twins, and Sasha made a friend with the non-sick one.
Then in the examination room, Dr Ross pushed her belly in and stuck her pinky up Sasha's butt :( Poor baby. Doc determined that Sasha didn't appear to be blocked, and that she would poo when the time was right. She thought that a good evacuation was imminent but actually we have still not seen any results.
I guess we'll see tomorrow. I've never actually been hopeful for a big baby poo.

Yesterday- My Birthday

Despite the fact that Sasha did NOT let us sleep very well, I think I had a nice birthday. I was too exhausted to bake myself a cake although I almost got a nice german chocolate cake started. Jon was understandably too tired (sasha didn't let him sleep last night) and busy with the baby, and Cassie is still too inexperienced with baking to suddenly bake a homemade german chocolate cake, or any homemade cake, from scratch by herself. Although she might surprise me.

Cassie surprised me and cleaned the whole darn house. Literally! I am definitely a mom....because that was the best birthday present ever. Haha! She did a really nice job on the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and everything.
I love my kids :)

Dada!

Dada
About a week ago, Sasha's regular babbling started to contain a lot more "dada's". The dada's increased, and so has her tone of voice when she says it. It's hard to describe, but her vocal tone is much different and a little bit sing-songy when she says it. Now, she uses Dada as a word. She mostly uses it when she wants something that she sees but Dad doesn't mind. He's flattered that she uses Dada when she wants something....Dada is certainly going to give her whatever she wants, especially when what she wants is her daddy. We give her lots of love and attention when she says it so her use of her first new word is increasing.

No messy diapers?
Poor baby has not had a poopy diaper in a while. It's been at least 4-5 days now. This from a baby who used to go at least 4-5 times a day. Every day I wake up and think "Oh boy, she's going to blow up a diaper today" but it isn't happening! I don't know what to do. We've withheld solids until she goes, in case that's what's stopped her up. She wouldn't eat more than a bite when we offered them to her anyways and several whole meals went to waste. If she doesn't go by the time the doctor's office opens this morning, I just might call and ask them for some advice.

Out to eat
I've been feeling lazy lately...too lazy to cook at least. So we've been going out to eat for a lot of our meals. Each time we go out to eat, we bring Sasha's Bumbo seat and set it upon the table for her to sit in. It really works well. Sasha gets a lot of attention from the restaurant patrons and from us, and feels like she's a part of the family meal. She is so well behaved, probably due to the fact that she is so included at the meals. I hand her one of her baby spoons and she wields it like a task-master, beating her bumbo seat with it for emphasis and occasionally attempting to put it in her mouth. I've been trying to work with her on the use of a straw to drink water. She's managed to get a few surprise mouthfuls but I don't think she's totally clear on the concept yet.

Object permanence
Yesterday, I was snuggling with the baby in bed, teaching her how to play peek-a-boo with the blankets. I wanted to test out her sense of object permanence so I let her see me put my hand under the blanket. Then I moved my hand so one finger would come into and out of view from under the blanket. Well, she would only watch the spot where the finger would come into and out of view. She didn't grab the blanket to uncover my hand. It really didn't seem like she had a sense of object permanence as far as the hand-under-the-blanket trick goes.

Rolling, rolling, rolling
Sasha has started a really annoying sleep habit: rolling around. A lot. It's like she's tossing and turning at high rpm. We could probably use her as power generator at the rate she's going. Fortunately she's not rolling in circles. If she's between her dad and me, she normally starts on her side facing me as she nurses herself to sleep. Then she'll roll over to face her Dad. She'll grab him, stay like that for about 10 seconds, then she'll roll back over to face me again. It almost seems like she's time-sharing her sleepy hugs between us. She does the same thing even if one of us is not there napping with her. It's not very conducive to getting a good night's sleep for her father and I. Eventually she ends up waking herself up by doing that too. And don't even get me started on the sleep situation. She is still on a day shift sleep schedule, which is hard on us.
Tonight, she's doing the rolling and beat up dad thing, and he has not been able to get any sleep at all. This is not good. As long as she insists on "sleeping" during the night and staying awake all day, we depend on him to get his sleep at night so he can watch her during the day. Then I can get some sleep during the day so I am not too tired at work at night.

Battered Mommy Syndrome
I'm starting to feel really beaten up. How embarassing to admit my 7 month old baby girl beats me. But boy does she beat me good. She's gotten a few good punch-kicks in on her father as well. Typically, I'm sitting on the couch with her standing in my lap facing me. She pulls my hair, hits my face, sticks her fingers up my nose and pulls, throws her fingers unexpectedly into my mouth and digs around, scratches my gums, tries to grab and pull my tongue out of my mouth, pokes my eyes. I am starting to get a bit frazzled by the hair pulling. So I put my hair up in a pony tail when I'm playing with her but does that help any? Nope. She still pulls on my bangs, pulls my hair anyways and ends up either ripping the hairs out of my scalp or pulls the hair out of the pony tail. I feel like I'm always wrestling her for my hair back. I'm starting to feel a little violated. Oh but she does it all with a smile and a cute giggle and she has such fun with it. I think it's just a phase but I think pretty soon I'm going to have to lay down the law on the little cutie. Not that I know how yet. I just know that I should probably start nipping this problem in the bud before it escalates.

That's a 'More'!

I'm going to call it today. Sasha is officially signing the word "More". She signs it when I ask her to and she mostly signs it when I'm tickling her or making her laugh and she wants me to do whatever it was that amused her again. It's so cute, it looks like she's clapping except with little fists when she does it.
I suspected she was signing "more" for the past few days but I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, just coincidence, or if maybe I was reading too much into her little clapping movement. But I think she's really doing it!

We're still reeling from Sasha's sleep schedule. I hope she has mercy on us soon.

The other night, we all decided to make a night run to IHOP. We took the bumbo seat along for Sasha to sit in on the table. She is so well behaved when she sits in that seat at the dinner table. Anyways I had a glass of water with a straw and Sasha learned how to drink from a straw.

And in other news, we were pleasantly surprised to see a sign of intelligence in that little baby brain. There is this attachment on her pack-n-play that plays music, sound effects, vibrates, and has a light. Each function has its own button. It's become her after-diaper routine to play with the buttons but she can't quite push the buttons with enough force to make them do what they're supposed to. So now she grabs one of her Dad's fingers, directs it to a button, pushes his finger to make it push the button with enough accuracy that she can switch the music, sound effects and lights. And she looks to make sure it does what it was supposed to. Like, she understands what each button is. When she pushes the button to turn on the different lights, she cranes her head to look at the specific light to make sure it goes on or off. Neat!

Happy 7 Months, Dancing Baby

Today, Sasha is 7 months old. My is she growing. I see that personality, that person that she is becoming. Or maybe it was who she was already but was unable to show us. Sometimes I look at her, and something familiar tickles the back of my mind and escapes before I can determine what it is. She just seems so familiar, like I've known her for years. Like she reminds me of somebody that I can't place. It makes me think to her "I know you".

Sasha has been in a wonderful mood lately. Today she danced!
She loves her Baby Einstein and her Baby Signing Time videos. Well the Baby Signing Time video also came with a music cd containing the songs that were on the video. Sasha and I were sitting in Cassie's room and Sasha kept looking at Cassie's radio, so I decided to show Sasha what it could do. I stuck her Baby Signing Time cd in it, and it played songs that are oh so familiar to her (and unfortunately to the rest of the household). At first she stared at the radio in puzzlement as if to say "Where's the video?". But she quickly got excited at the music. Once the Diaper Dance song came on, she started squealing, singing, dancing and having such a good time!! Oh it was so cute. I called Jon to watch and the whole family was entertained by Sasha's contagious enthusiasm and dancing.

She didn't get to sleep until very late again. But when she's in a good mood, I am mesmerized by her and I don't mind at all.

More Biting

Well, Sasha's biting is back again. Not as bad as it was when Sasha first got her new teeth, but it is still driving me insane enough to consider switching to exclusively pumping for a while. You would think that I would get used to it. That I wouldn't feel like crying when it happens. It makes me so emotional and I don't quite understand my emotional response or why my emotional response is so intense. It's not just the pain, although trust me it hurts as bad as it sounds when an infant decides to clamp down on your nipple as hard as she can with brand new, never used sharp baby teeth. Maybe it's because I have to actually wrestle with my baby to get my nipple back? Maybe it's the sudden adrenaline rush, followed by having to supress my every natural response to kick the ass of whatever is hurting me because what is hurting me is an incredibly cute and sweet laughing baby? Maybe it's the graphic image I get in my head of my baby biting my nipple off and laughing about it. Or maybe it's just a remnant of ppd, of which I think I might still be suffering from a little bit. And frankly, I do feel a little violated. I know I'm wrong, but sometimes it feels like she's mocking me.
So now, our nursing sessions are sort of analogous to those old west stand-offs. You know, the duels in the street where the gunslingers face each other and wait until some signal to draw their weapons? They just stand there twitching, watching each other, waiting. I don't know if she's quite related to my yelping in pain to the times when she's bitten me, so perhaps she thinks I'm prone to randomly screaming and it makes her nervous. I think she's starting to make the connection: "When I bite mom, it makes her make really neat noises. Let's see that again!". I applaud her cleverness but her experimentation still hurts.
Okay, so I think that I can figure out a pattern. I know she never bites me when she's about to fall asleep, or when she's very hungry. I listen to her swallow out of habit so I can tell when she is done eating. Most of her bites occur right as she decides she is done eating. Otherwise, if I this gets worse again, I'll have to see about switching to pumping for all but her bedtime feedings.

I didn't have any original nursing goals in mind. I think my goal is for Sasha to never have to drink a drop of formula. I don't mind having to pump to accomplish that goal if I have to. It would be easier on us if we continued nursing. Once she turns a year old, we can start to gradually switch her to cow's milk, so I guess that means 5 more months of nursing or pumping. In that case, we're over half way there.