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Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Beginning of the End

1/19/10: I didn’t have enough milk for Aurora’s early morning feeding, and had to go get her 2oz of formula to top her off. So I skipped the pumping that night, in hopes that I would build up enough milk for the next morning.
1/20/10: I had enough milk for Aurora, but was sad that it took over 14 hours to build it up. Did NOT take my pump to work, since I knew at this level of production I wouldn’t need to pump. Decided to try to breast feed Aurora for her bedtime feeding, which is normally a bottle. (She is best about breastfeeding when A. I have enough milk, B. When its time to sleep; night and early morning, and C. When I do it in her room, with the lights out in the rocking chair.) Wasn’t as through of a feeding as I would have liked, but at least she did it. Didn’t pump afterward.
1/21/10: Seemed to have enough this morning too. So my new schedule is no pumping, breastfeed for the early morning feeding, formula (and all her yummy food) during the day, and a breastfeeding at night to send her to sleepyland. We will see how long she is good about feeding for those two times, and how well my production holds up for that.

On a related note, she LOVES food! My favorite so far is fish with carrot and cheese sauce. It is so good I would eat it, and she really enjoys it. It has been great to get all these awesome ideas and recipes from Top 100 Baby Purees (Thanks Lisa!!!) because I would never think of all of them on my own. She is also a huge sweet potato fan, and of course her old classic stand by, cereal with fruit. She is really good with her finger foods, (Cheerios, crusty bread, etc.) She has a strange upset tummy with random things though. She ate a cracker over the holidays and threw it up later, then this last weekend we were out to dinner and they had fresh made flour tortillas (not whole grain but I thought it would be fine, just flour and water, right?) WRONG, she threw up exorcist style. I had a fun time trying to clean her and her chair up in the women’s restroom of the restaurant at the same time. She is now eating a full 3 times a day, or 4-5 if they are small meals. A full meal is normally 3 cubes of food, 2 heaping tablespoons of cereal mixed with 2 oz of formula and about 3oz of milk or formula to wash it down. Wow! I have a good video of eating but it needs some “super soldier” editing first. ;0)

She is also loving cruising around, and wants to walk. She isn’t trying to walk on her own yet; realizes that to get from point A to B she will still go back to the floor to crawl, but she has a blast pulling herself up on everything she can to make herself a big tall girl. After seeing how much she loved a rolling walker that Boston let her try out at the park a week back, we bought one of our own. It’s so cute; a Disney princess “car” that also has a nice handle on the back, so she can use it as a walker or sit on it and have us push her which she loves too. I don’t think she is going to make my prediction of walking by 9 months (which is in 2 weeks) but I do think she will be right on track for what I was; sometime in the 10th month.

She tries to get into everything now, plays with everything, but knows the word “no” and does listen to us when we say it seriously with force. Sometimes she gets sensitive and starts to cry, but usually she just takes it with a grain of salt and finds something else to do. We are so lucky!

She also got her first taste of cake. Boy oh boy does she love it. We got to go to an AWESOME 1st B-day party of Mr. Boston Bruce, and Ashley put the cake down on the ground outside for easy access to all the kids (what a great idea!). We held Aurora back for a little bit but she REALLY wanted to be a part of the action, so we let her go for it. This is what transpired:



Boston digs in...


The other kids just can't hold back

Aurora's first taste of cake...



Look at the cake, mom!




Look at this mess, seriously!

Evidence of the crime scene.... the tracks that the criminal left.





















Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Into EVERYTHING

Well, our days of cute cuddly little Aurora are done. Welcome to the days of "No!" and "Not for you!", bumps, bruises, and frustrated babies. If we were not sure before, Aurora is officially my baby. She wants to be a part of everything, has the patience of... well an 8 month old (and if she takes after me that number will not grow with her age), and is so easily frustrated at everything that she CANT do that her squeals of dissatisfaction have prompted calls from the neighbors to CPS – well no, not quite, but that is a growing fear of mine.

She is not a happy camper when:
- She can’t walk
- She can’t be at your level
- She can’t chew Guinness’s chew toys
- You won’t give her your pretties (jewelry)
- We don’t have her food ready the second she decides she is hungry
- We don’t feed her fast enough
- I don’t have as much milk in my jugs as she wants (yea formula)
- Her legs get stuck up in her sleepers since her legs are so skinny they don’t stay down in the legs
- She has to stay still to get dressed

She is happy when:
- She is sleeping
- She is nursing (well) or drinking her bottle or eating
- She is playing with her favorite toy while sucking her favorite passy
- You are playing peek-a-boo with her
- You are tickling her

She is moving all over the place and won’t sit still for one single second. She is either up and moving, or down and sleeping. Nothing in between. No happy content baby to just sit and play quietly. She tries to commit suicide every other minute in a myriad of ways; chewing on electrical cords, diving off chairs and couches, jumping out of your arms, trying to walk even though she clearly doesn’t have the balance or dexterity for it yet… Every time she does one of these things, Ryan gives me the look. The look says, “that is your daughter, and she is acting just like you.” I’m waiting for the busted lips and black eyes. At least the damage is limited, for the time being, seeing as how she is so short; hence close to the ground. *Sigh* We are in for it.