The Best View in the House
The best view in the house is from my pillow.
One of these days we’re going to move her into her own room. It will be nice to have our room back, but I’m sure going to miss this view.
Dear Gem – Month 5
Month 5 has been a big month for us. You’ve really started to move. You started rolling over a few weeks ago, and now we’ve reached a point where you don’t stay where I put you. You’re not quite crawling yet, but you manage to cover quite a bit of ground with rolling and scooching.
You also have a great deal more control over your fingers. You can reach out and grab things (judging distance has improved too), pick them up, turn them over, whack them on the floor, or unfortunately, your own head, and you’ve discovered that it’s a whole lot more difficult for me to put you down when you are clinging to my clothes and hair. Smarty pants.
You are supposed to be sleeping right now, but I went to check on you a few moments ago and you were wide awake with your feet up in the air and you were holding on to your foot. This is a favorite position for you these days. To make things interesting, one of your legs was completely outside of your jammies – one piece, footed jammies. And I had swaddled you when I put you down. So somehow, without being heard over the monitor you managed to get out of your swaddling, get a leg out of your jammies and play grab the toesies while I wasn’t looking. You surprise me nearly every day.
We are having so much fun with you.
I love you
Mommy
Read more Letters to Gem.
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One Year Ago: Serenity
Two Years Ago: My Hillbilly Husband
In Her Grip
For months my baby girl would hold on to a toy you put in her hand, but it wasn’t really meaningful to her. And then, some moment when I wasn’t watching, she started playing with them: holding, shaking, tasting, passing it from hand to hand until it drops to the floor and the entire world comes to an end. At times I’ve even caught her talking to them, and I don’t know if I have ever witnessed anything quite so endearing.
She’s picked her favorite toys as well. Not one favorite toy. Three. And she tries to hold on to all three of them at the same time, with varying degrees of success. I clipped two of them together in an attempt to save my own sanity. The toys are easier for her to hold; my sanity is still in question.
Burrito Baby
Some times the experts do know best.
We studied up a lot on the best childcare techniques and theories before Gem was born. One of the things we kept coming across over and over again was the 5 Ss – 5 soothing techniques that when used in combination should help to calm a stressed out baby.
The basic concept behind these techniques is duplicating the environment in the womb to make baby feel safe
- Swinging – motion
- Shushing sounds – soothing sounds
- Side or Stomach – for holding, not for sleeping
- Sucking – pacifier or bottle or breastfeeding
- Swaddling
We dutifully went through the steps when Gem was fussy, and swaddled her every night when putting her to bed. All of the steps seemed to make her feel better except swaddling. Swaddling made her mad. Since the purpose of these steps was to relieve her stress, we thought why keep this up? So we stopped swaddling.
There was no major fallout from excluding that step, but I stressed a bit on colder nights. I couldn’t think of a good way to keep her warm since loose blankets in the crib are a no-no.
Then a couple weeks ago we went to a reunion from our childbirth class to meet everyone’s babies, and touch base on how we were all doing. We got to talking about the 5 Ss and how helpful they are, and I mentioned how Gem really hates to be swaddled.
“Our’s does too,” replied one of the dads, “but we swaddle her up every night anyways, and she sleeps like a rock.”
So I thought I’d give it another try. She started screaming while I was wrapping her up. I wrapped her anyways, and told myself I’d step away where she can’t see me and let her go for 5 minutes; then I would reassess what to do next. She was passed out in less than 2 minutes. Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, she doesn’t even fuss every time I wrap her up – and she doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night as often either.
One of the things about swaddling a baby who is bigger than newborn, is that the receiving blankets are completely worthless. The receiving blankets are much to small to swaddle a baby over 12 pounds.
Grandma to the rescue.
My mom went to the fabric store and picked out several different patterns of flannel. The bolts are roughly 3 feet wide, mom had them just cut the length to match the width so they were square. Then she did a quick hem around the edges.
These blankets are pretty much all we use anymore. The little receiving blankets make great burp cloths, but to snuggle up with baby, we use the big flannels. They have been a life saver.
Wrap her up like a burrito, and my baby sleeps like a Gem.
One year ago: The Great Tree
Three years ago: Little Highlander
Rolling Over
Gem rolled over to her belly last Monday, by Friday she was rolling to her belly and back to her back. She was never a fan of tummy time, so the denouement of all that struggle, and effort – and ultimately success – was the indignity of finding herself face down.
We’ve moved beyond that now. Aside from her new skill of returning to her back, she’s made peace with the view from her belly. A new baby gym with toys hanging over head as well as attached to the mat below have helped facilitate that change of heart.
Now that she can roll over. She’s decided she’d rather sleep on her side.
I love how these little legs are so plump, her feet don’t touch the bed.
PNW Highland Games 2009
As it turns out, I have a lot to learn about packing my daughter up to go anywhere more than 5 minutes away from home. This weekend was the PNW Highland Games in Enumclaw, Washington. We go every year. Every year we get sunburned, eat greasy food, and listen to really loud music – and complain about the unrelenting heat. This year was no different, except we brought along Uncle Timmy, and my daughter, and the stroller, and sunblock, and a cooler with ice packs to keep bottled water and her teething toys cool, and plenty of toys, and plenty of diapers, and several changes of clothes, and oh, good grief I don’t even remember what all we brought. But it wasn’t enough, even though most of the items we did bring were not used. What we should have brought were a bunch of chairs, a canopy, and a solar powered personal air conditioning device (has anyone even invented one of these yet? if not, get on it stat!).
By far the coolest thing that happened in that 100 degree weather was the discovery of a booth selling electric bagpipes. Electric! Bagpipes! Meaning they have volume control, or you can even plug in headphones and the old man can pipe away without making a peep. But that’s not the cool part. Aaron was trying out the pipes, rocking out on a song by the Wicked Tinkers when in walked Aaron Shaw with a huge smile on his face. “Great Job!” he said when my husband stopped playing. Who is Aaron Shaw? He’s the piper for the Wicked Tinkers and he wrote the song my husband was playing. How often does an artist get to perform a work (and perform it well) in front of the person that created it? My husband was riding that high for the rest of the day.
I don’t have much in the way of pictures from the games – nobody tells you how much harder it is to take photographs when you’re trying to keep tabs on a little one. I shouldn’t complain too much, I even had two helpers with me. But in lieu of photos, I will leave you with the Wicked Tinkers on Craig Ferguson. This performance focuses more on the drums for obvious reasons, but these guys are fun
Three years ago: Alibi Room
