Bragging

Ada was 18 months on the first of August. This necessitated a trip to her paediatrician on Saturday for a round of vaccinations.

The first thing he said when he saw her was "Look how happy!"

He's noted before, but reiterated then that she is one of the most confident babies he has (supposedly) ever seen.

She then proceeded to wow him with her vocabulary.

I had been trying to make a list of all the words she knows and uses on a regular basis while sitting in the waiting room but I ran out of room on my little slip of paper when I got to 130+. (Later counts put it at 200+).

He told me that most two year old children don't even come close to her verbal skills and that I'll probably be getting a lot of dirty looks from other parents in the waiting room from now on.

She can count to 10 (though more often than not she leaves out 8).

She's been doing the question/answer manipulation for a good two months, example -

Ada: Freezy pop?
Me: You want a freezy pop?
Ada: OK!

- as if it were my idea all along.

She uses 2 and 3 word phrases (and has been for quite some time), here's a sampling:

• Shoes on! (when she wants to go outside)
• Don't cry baby.
• Mama/Daddy sing.
• Right there (indicating that she wants you to put something somewhere for her, or possible put HER somewhere - like inside the refrigerator)
• Hush, Dodger (the dog) or Hush, Baby.
• Sing Twinkle Twinkle.
• More _____ (fill in the blank)
• Watch animals
• Read book, read it
• Thank you, Mama/Daddy.
• Good morning, Mama/Daddy.
• Push a button.
• Move it!
• Bubbles everywhere!
• Clean up, clean hands.
• Good girl!
• Mess I made.

Also, just for posterity because I haven't written it down anywhere else -
on July 7, 2008, Ada was playing by herself when suddenly she stopped what she was doing and started staring into space. I watched her for a moment, wondering what was going on in that head of hers. She turned, looked me dead in the eye and said "Wuv you, Mama" then toddled over and hugged my legs.

First unprompted declaration of love! I nearly died.

Homeostasis: 38 Weeks

Ada,

Today at 9:10 a.m. you have officially been outside of my womb as long as you were in it. The past 38 weeks have been incredible in so many ways. I haven't been recording everything about your childhood as faithfully as I wanted but I'm going to take time today to recap what has happened so far and record your newest tricks and likes and funnies.

The last time I wrote about you here you had just learned to roll over both ways. You weren't crawling yet but were sitting up pretty well. Then, in a matter of weeks you started commando crawling - using your forearms to drag your body - everywhere! And you could do it fast! By the end of August you had perfected sitting up. A few weeks later you could pull up to your knees. By the end of September you were pulling up to a stand every chance you could get. You're actually still doing this. You love to pull up on everything and everyone. In the past week you have completely ditched the commando crawl and you've moved on to the full fledged hands and knees crawl. It makes you that much closer to whatever it is you want to pull up on. If we had furniture that was even remotely close together you'd be cruising. Right now you sort of side step down the couch. You are very conscientious of getting back down once you are standing. You take your time to squat and lower one hand the ground before letting go with the other hand. I find this completely hilarious. You look like a little old lady with stiff joints. You rarely just plop down on your bottom - this usually only happens when you've got something in both hands and forget that you're standing up. You've also been able to get into a sitting position from a crawling position for several weeks now.

On September 19th you cut your first tooth - lower left central incisor. I was, perhaps, overly excited. I didn't even realize you were teething and then that night as I was feeding you cereal for dinner you opened wide and there it was! A tiny little tooth poking out. I have only been able to explain outburst of jubilation thusly: All the other developments so far I have seen in progress. I've seen you work out in your head how you are going to move from one spot to another, how you are going to get that toy that's out of reach, where you are going to place your hands so you can pull up. The tooth? That was a complete and utter surprise. I think you have another one coming in now - lower right central incisor - and I can't wait to see it too!

You are a good eater. You've been on solids since you were 6 months old. It may only be a coincidence but once you started solid food you jumped from the 10-20th percentile to the 50th percentile in almost every measurement, including your head. You're not very picky - you will usually eat anything I give you except for green beans. You hate them with a fiery passion. They make you gag and make awful faces. It's hilarious. I've tried several times, but each time it's the same reaction. Even though you will eat many different things, I believe you would exist on O-shaped cereal and yogurt if I would let you. You love those O's and yogurt. And you love feeding yourself. You've lately been trying to take the spoon away when I feed you. So I let you try it on your own. And it was a mess but you loved it!
So far the finger foods you've tried are:

O's
Toast
Bagels
Bananas
Avocado
Kiwi
Spiral Pasta

You are good at all of them, even the slippery ones. You've really got that pincer grasp down pat.

You just woke up from your nap so I'll have to continue later.

Love,
Mama

Long time no blog

Fauxhawk
Originally uploaded by All's Wells

Hi, Ada here! How are you guys?

I've been keeping Mama busy - too busy to blog. With the whole "me-learning-something-new-everyday" she barely has time to doing anything other than gaze at me in amazement and adoration. And come on, look at me! Who could resist staring at me for hours on end? I'm stinkin' cute as my Nonnie likes to say.

I can roll over both ways now. I'm getting pretty good at sitting up on my own. I love to stand as long as someone is supporting my torso.

I haven't quite got the whole crawling thing figured out yet. I mostly just rock side to side and hope against hope that I will be propelled forward. Sometimes I inadvertently do a sort of commando-crawl, using just my arms and dragging my body along behind me but that freaks me out a little bit so I quickly stop.

I love to laugh and blow raspberries. And I LOVE it when anyone talks or sings to me. I make new friends wherever I go. Mama says I'm a good baby. Except that waking up every two hours at night thing, she says that can stop now.

There are a few new pictures of me up here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allswells/sets/72157600935050440/

More coming later as soon as Nonnie gets them to us.

Later 'gators!

Ada Zee

Puddle

Last night, Ada awoke from a fairly sound sleep emitting a heartbreaking cry that can only mean she's in pain. I scooped her up from the bassinet and cuddled her while Melbourne prepared the gas drops for dosing. She slurped them down, took her pacifier and started to calm down as I rocked and shushed. Just as she was drifting back to sleep I saw a smile spreading behind her pacifier. And then she laughed.

My heart melted.

3 Month Round-Up

How in the world do new mothers ever find the time to do anything let alone post to blogs? I have a good baby, a really really good baby who generally only takes 45 minutes naps and during those naps I am frantically trying to do office work, wash clothes, wash dishes, take a shower, put the nursery together (rooms are finally done, yay!), etc. So the blog has been neglected.

But for posterity's sake here is what's happened in the last 2 months and what's happening now.

Cloth Diapers
When Ada first came home she was way too tiny to fit into any of the cloth diapers we had. So we started out with preemie disposables. Once she got a bit bigger we started trying out the different cloth options. We started with the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap with a standard pre-fold cloth diaper. This option leaves poor Ada with a huge wad of cloth between her legs and when she is lying on her side she can't bring her legs together, one is always propped up in the air and it looks very uncomfortable. I've tried folding the cloth diaper is the opposite direction of the recommended tri-fold and that works better, however it is less absorbent.
Next we tried Kissaluvs snap diapers inside the Bummis Super Whisper Wrap. Guess what? The Bummis newborn size wrap will not close over the Kissaluvs size 0 diaper. Just too much fabric. I've order some bigger wraps so I'll try those out soon. Last up is the Swaddlebees All-In-One Snap Diaper. I like them for their ease of use but they have their drawbacks too. They are very bulky and I have to put in an extra insert or Ada soaks through and leaks immediately. And they do leak. I just can't get the leg closures tight enough. Actually all the cloth options leak so far.
So we are currently doing a mixture of cloth and disposable. She gets a Pampers night-time diaper that will last her a good 9-10 hours at bed time and we are trying to alternate between cloth and disposable during the day (Nana bought us 3 large packs of disposable so we've got to use them anyway) and she gets disposables if we go out. She definitely gets much fussier when she has a wet cloth diaper as opposed to a wet disposable so I think sticking with cloth will help when it comes time to potty train. The laundry for cloth is not that bad, especially now that she's older and the poopy diapers have tapered off considerably.

Sleep
Since Ada was about 2-3 weeks old she would pretty predictably sleep at least one 5 hour stretch each night. She has kept that up and some nights she sleeps as much as 7-8 hours in a stretch. The issue is of course the very late bedtime. She wasn't going to bed until midnight, but then she slowly started going to be earlier and earlier and we were down to 10:45 which was awesome. Then this past week she has been going through the 12 week sleep regression (she is 14 weeks but since she was born two weeks early she hits some of these growth spurts later). She does NOT want to go to sleep and she fights it tooth and nail. Even naps times are torture. She used to be so easy. When she was sleepy she wanted a bit of a snuggle and then she'd drift off. Very often she would go to sleep if you put her down drowsy. Not now - oh, no. There's a lot of screaming and crying involved. I've read that this should resolve itself in the next few days and for my sanity I truly hope so. For the past 3 days the longest stretch of sleep she got a night was 4 hours one night. The rest of the nights she was up every 2 hours. I am a zombie.

Developmental
Ada squeals, coos, makes combined vowel-consonant sounds like "ah-goo", smiles, laughs a little bit, mimics mouth movements, and is almost blowing raspberries - she sometimes seems surprised when she does it, like she wasn't quite sure she meant to do it. She follows me around the room with head and eyes if Melbourne is holding her. She recognizes my voice. She is holding her head steady and has been doing so for a while. She puts weight on her legs and can almost hold herself completely steady on her legs with minimal support from me or Melbourne. She "walks" - If you hold her upright she will shift the weight from one foot to the other and always brings the moving foot slight more forward than then stationary one so if you help her along it looks as if she is walking. She is grabbing toys and her little face gets the funniest look when she's concentrating. Her upper lip sticks out and her brow furrows. She HATES tummy time so we are behind on upper body strength. She can lift her head while on her tummy but can't do the mini push-up yet.

And she's awake, 35 minutes this time hooray!, so I'll have to continue later.

1 month old

Dear Ada,

You turned one month old two days ago. To celebrate that auspicious occasion you decided not to sleep. At all. All you wanted to do was nurse constantly. I'm not sure it was as fun as you thought it would be. By 11:00pm you had dark circles under your eyes and you were looking pretty worse for wear. Thankfully you finally passed out and slept for five hours straight.

I think you would have slept all day yesterday but I had to interrupt your nap time to take you for your second doctor visit. And Ada, I was so proud of you! Though you screamed your head off when I had to undress you and the whole office could hear you, I didn't care because my dear girl you had gained 1 lb. 5 oz. since your last visit and you now weigh 6 lbs. 6 oz.!

Relief flooded through me. I had been afraid earlier in the month that perhaps I just wasn't making enough milk for you. We had a poopy scare when you went 48 hours without having a bowel movement (yes I'm telling the whole Internet about your bowel movements, I'll pay for your therapy later) and I was sure you just weren't getting enough nourishment. Of course this was after your doctor had told me to only let you feed for 10 minutes on each breast. I'm not sure I trust him. After the 'scare' I started letting you feed as long as you wanted to on one side and then if you still acted hungry after burping and diaper changes I'd switch you to the other. I guess we showed him because you started pooping like a champ again and look at you now with your chubby thighs!


You've gotten taller as well. You grew a whole inch and a half! Despite your leaps and bounds in the growth department your clothes still don't fit you. Everything is too big for you, my tiny baby. The doctor says you're still on the small baby scale. That's OK, though. You'll catch up I'm sure and in the meantime your Nonnie is sending an emergency package of preemie and newborn clothes. All those cute 0-3 months clothes will just have to wait.

You are perfectly normal in every other way. You grab my and your Daddy's fingers and hold on tight and stare at us for long periods of time. You love looking at contrasting dark and light patterns. You hate having your diaper changed and will let the whole world know it. You've got quite a set of lungs on you and when you get really mad you shriek. Seriously, you shriek. You love to hang out and stare at the Curious George stuffed animal that your Papa got for you.


You make some of the funniest faces that make me laugh out loud. Sometimes you look like a little old man, sometimes I think you look like Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle (I know you won't know who that is, maybe I should find a picture for you), most of the time you look just like your Daddy, but lately I've been able to see a little bit of me in you.

I've given you two nicknames, Ada Potato which was too obvious, and Ada Zee which cracks me up every time I say it. Your Daddy has started calling you Ada Zee too so I think that one will stick.

We don't have you on a set bedtime schedule yet since I'm basically feeding you on demand - and frankly I don't know when we should. Last night you slept for 6 1/2 hours before you woke up to eat and then you went back to sleep for another 3 1/2 hours. I don't know if that's because you were still exhausted from your celebrations on Thursday but I'm not going to complain about it. I'm following your lead for now. Except if you try to pull the no sleeping during the day thing again - we might have to have a talk about that.


Your Nonnie went home last week after spending nearly a month with us. She cooked and cleaned like a champ (I don't think I've ever had so many clean clothes at once, I had to buy more hangers!) but more importantly she held you and rocked you and sang to you and told you stories and showered you with love and kisses. Your Daddy and I weren't sure what we were going to do once she went home. Heck, we're still not sure what we're doing. We've only had one home cooked meal since she left and I've only had one real shower. We miss Nonnie! But we're getting the hang of it.

There's so much more, little girl. You've packed a lot into this last month and I can't even list it all. We love you more every day and your Daddy and I can't wait to see what the next month brings.

Love,
Mama

Hwyl Annwyl Mam

The birth story took 20 days to write. This entry took just as long even though I will not drag it out into multiple parts.

I gave birth to Ada on Thursday, February 1st, and we all returned home on Saturday.

For two short days Ada had both of her grandmothers in the house with her.

On Monday, February 5th, Melbourne's mother, Anne Jillian, passed away.

It still hurts, it still stings, and it still seems like a very bad dream. To have such joy be tempered so soon by such sorrow is a very hard pill to swallow.

I still don't know what to say.

Jill was a character - full of ideas and stories. A thinker and traveler with a sharp wit and a sharp tongue. I am glad that I knew her.

For a long time I didn't think she liked me. How could anyone be good enough for her only baby boy? But in the time that we spent together before Ada's birth we bonded in a way that I hadn't thought would ever be possible. It was so good to have a woman around to talk to during that time. I got to hear stories of Melbourne's birth and childhood, stories of her travels around the world. I'm profoundly grateful that I had that time with her.

At the same I am profoundly saddened that Ada will not get to hear the Welsh accent tripping off of her grandmother's tongue. I hope that the fact that we gave her a Welsh middle name will inspire her to learn more about the land of her grandmother. I hope that we are able to keep her memory alive.

We miss you, Jill. As your dear husband said so eloquently at your service, travel in peace.