February update!

February has heralded the arrival of 4 that's right.... count em up 4 new teeth. Technically two of them started to come out in January, but by this months end Baby's little vampire fangs filled in and her top front row of teeth are in place. They look a little bit like piranha teeth as they are slightly spaced apart, they are so cute!!!!.

Leaps and bounds is the best way to describe this months progress, baby has perfected the art of crawling, she has learned to pull herself from her belly into a sitting position, she has learned how to pull herself up on the furniture into a standing position, she has learned how to creep around said furniture, she knows how to walk forward holding onto mommy or daddy's hands, she knows how to say mommy and didi (daddy) and last but not least she has learned how to bounce like a bunny rabbit in her jolly jumper. So much change in such a short period of time..... its both exciting and a bit sad, she is not going to be a baby too much longer, she is working her way into toddler-hood at a rapid pace.

Daddy's girl is how I would best describe Buggito's personality at this time. If you so much as whisper "daddy", it brings about squeals and shrieks of "DIDIDIDIDIDIIIIIIII". Mama "Mo-Mo" only gets called when its time for a good feeding or snuggle nap, the rest of the time its all about Chris. That's okay though he put in allot of time of playing second fiddle to me when she was really little and only wanted the food source to attend to her needs. It warms my heart to see his big smiles when she calls out to him and to watch him scoop her up into his arms singing "sweet little buttercup" to her as they prance around the house:). It was literally a year ago we went up to Halifax for an ultrasound and found out the sex of the baby, as soon as we found out it was a girl he was in a slight state of shock. He was so scared he wouldn't know how to parent a girl and so worried she would be a little fragile porcelain doll easily breakable and hard to handle. He grew into his roll nicely and its nice to see all those fears alleviated today :).

Buggito's baby babble is off the hook, she has lots to say, if only we could understand it all :). One department were having difficulty with is getting baby to eat her rice cereal, because she is a breastfed baby she needs the extra iron that this cereal provides for her. She HATES it!!! I am able to sneak her a few bites in some yogurt some days but over all she is not a fan, if she sees me mixing it she starts making gagging noises in her highchair. We have tried a few different brands and making it more palatable but nothing seems to work. Tomorrow I am going to the dietitian to get some tips and tricks and figure out how to get iron into her diet. On the plus side baby likes some foods, she does like yogurt, peas, prunes, edamame, cheese, crackers, I think she enjoys the novelty of feeding herself small pieces of easily chewed food!

January a month in review...

January 4th 2011, the worst day of my life. I started off my morning doing up some dishes with baby sitting in her highchair just behind me watching mama work. I had just finished up and went to pull Buggito out of her highchair, in order to remove her from her chair you need to pull the tray off completely. I didn't want to put it down on the dirty floor so I turned around to place it on the counter top. Now this highchair has a safety belt and little miss should have been fine sitting there for the 2 seconds I turned my back.....but that was not the case. She had either managed to undo her belt under the tray when I wasn't looking or it had popped open when she leaned forward. However it happened doesn't matter, what happened next happened so fast I'm not sure how I could have intercepted it. I turned around to see her leaning forward to grab at her toes and as I reached my arm out to get her I watched her fall, as soon as the fall began~I screamed, and she landed flat on her little tummy right on the hard kitchen floors.

I rushed to her and scooped her up in my arms and she was quiet for a moment, sucking in the air required for the scream that followed. I had the highchair at its highest setting and for a baby her size it was a HUGE drop. I called up the stairs to Chris, "get your jacket we need to go to the emergency room". He came running down stairs and I began to bundle Buggito up in her snowsuit, she was bawling the entire time. We got into the car and drove up to the hospital. I was so scared she had bumped her head or perhaps broken her ribs or had internal bleeding of some sort. The nurse took us in right away and we waited for a doctor. The baby was so upset and so scared at this point she cried when the doctor came near her, he was able to determine her arms were okay but he had a hard time determining if her legs were hurt. He gave her some infant Tylenol to help with the pain and waited awhile for it to kick in before he came back.

When he did return he tried lightly pulling at her legs, but still couldn't figure out if they were injured or not. I told him she was able to stand on her legs when I held her and so we tried that, I noticed immediately she wouldn't put any weight on her right leg. He decided to send us over for a few x-rays of her leg and her torso. I snuggled her up and we walked over to the waiting area for x-rays, they had a rocking chair and I was able to rock her into a nice relaxed state. Once we made it to the x-ray room however that changed quickly. As soon as she was placed on the hard table and stripped down to her diaper she was screaming bloody murder. I had to hold her little legs and the technician held her arms above her head her little lips were trembling so her screams had a shudder to them. It was hard not to cry seeing how terrified she was and knowing I couldn't just scoop her up and make it stop for her right away.

When the x-ray was over we went back to a quiet room in the E.R to await our results, an hour or so later the doctor came in and said she had a buckle fracture on her right leg. He took us out to look at the x-ray, he decided the best course of action would be to splint her leg right away and have us wait for the pediatrician. We waited for what seemed like another hour and finally the pediatrician came in, he gave her an additional examination to ensure it was only the leg that had been affected, He told us that the babies major bone growth would take about 10 days to heal. We had to leave the splint on her and take her back to the orthopedic specialist in 3 days time for a check up. We were given the green light to go home where we spent our afternoon smothering Buggito with attention.

I was so worried child protective services would investigate us because we came into the hospital with an infant with a fractured leg, for a few weeks I was feeling uneasy and maybe a bit maniacal about keeping the house in order just in case someone came knocking on the door. But to my relief no one came, and a few friends and coworkers shared their stories of babies first accidents and it made me feel a bit better that I wasn't the only "horrible mother" who allowed her child to "get broken" on her watch. I had so much guilt for being so careless and allowing the baby to fall. Chris was my champion and kept telling me kids have accidents, they get hurt and that mistakes happen. He was so understanding, I'm glad if it had to happen it happened on my watch because I don't think I would have been as kind and good to him if the shoe was on the other foot. But I will remember how he comforted me on my screw up so when his turn comes I can support him in the same way.

We went back to the orthopedic specialist who said she seemed to be healing well, he gave us a new bandage and took the bottom part of her splint off. We had to come back in a weeks time to ensure it had healed properly. We went back the following Friday and lo and behold, the splint could come off and she seemed fine. We were initially worried it may delay her crawling and standing, but I think she managed to use her splinted leg as a kickstand to help herself crawl. She went from dragging herself on her belly to full on crawling in a matter of days of having the splint on. Once her leg healed the majority of the excitement for baby in January was that she weighed in at 23 lbs (the same size as a one year old!!!) and she got her top two lateral incisors so she looked a little bit like a little vampire for a few weeks.

The fun and excitement of Christmas!

Whew its been awhile since my last post!!!. So I have allot of catching up to do. Lets start where the last post left off. How was our Christmas?. Christmas this year was probably one of the funnest Christmas's we have had in awhile. In Chris's family they do their presents at midnight on Christmas eve, so this year we decided that's how we were going to do it. We waited up until midnight and set up the camera and began grabbing toys for little miss to unwrap. She was still a bit to young to really appreciate the anticipation of the unwrapping process.

I think she still had fun though, She was very interested in looking at each present and less about opening up any of the new ones. It would have been nice to have some more family around to spend time with, but at the same time this year we were able to hog Buggitto all to ourselves. We did manage to make it to my Boss's house for their Christmas party for a couple of hours, that was really fun. It was nice to have somewhere loud and full of friendly holiday faces to be with.

( As you can see in the chaos, she made out like a bandit this year)

(two out of three babies eagerly awaiting Christmas presents!)

We decided to make our first turkey dinner together this year as well. As we didn't have a proper large roasting pan we opted to just buy a cheap foil one at the grocery store at the same time we got our turkey. Chris did the turkey and I did the trimmings and it turned out wonderfully. Unfortunately When Chris went to carve the turkey he jabbed the knife right through the bottom of the pan, before we knew it turkey juices were flooding the table. They went right through the leaflet on the table and when Mushu (the dog) came out from underneath her coat was soaked. After a few minutes of stopping the leak unsuccessfully, we Christened that dinner the B.P turkey dinner. (Ha ha the joke was in poor taste but the dinner was delicious!!! bada-bing, bada-boom!) Anyhow we did eventually manage to stop the leak and were able to sit down to eat, despite our valiant effort to tackle the turkey we still had waaaay to much meat left over so I was able to make three huge pots of turkey soup to freeze for another day.

(heres our dinner pre-spill chaos!!!)

Buggitto watched her first Christmas special which was pretty cute, she watched Shrek the halls all the way through. She especially like the Shrek babies, whenever they came on screen she started to make little grunts of excitement and shake her fists around. We had a quiet boxing day, we managed to get the baby a nice coat for next year at a good price but that was about it. So for our first family Christmas I have to say I was not disappointed and next year should be even better as baby will be a bit more responsive to things.

Whats new??

As the month of November ends I find myself rethinking my Christmas present choice, baby may not be quite ready for a small grand piano. A few more age appropriate toys will be best for her as she has really begun to appreciate playing with her various toys. While on a Christmas note~ we set up our Christmas tree last week and baby took her Santa mall photo. We took Buggito to the mall about an hour and a half before Santa was due to arrive, of course rather than fall asleep right away, she didn't decide to nap until about 15 minutes before Santa arrived. I tried waking her up for photos a few times but she was having none of it, so I decided that's fine she can just nap on Santa for her photo. As soon as she was placed in his lap her eyes shot open and she sat there mildly stunned/ confused trying to figure out where she was. The photographer got our picture and we decided Ah-what the hell, its better than a pic of her screaming we'll take it.

We finally took our family themed Halloween photos (almost a month late), I should have those handy by mid December to share. That leaves three photo shoots to go. This coming up Sunday is doggie Mall Santa photos, then we want to do a tacky family picture in front of our Christmas tree for our Christmas cards, last but never least will be baby girls fancy Christmas portrait!. Whew!!! Chronicling my family can be exhausting work!.

Buggitos first tooth popped up a friend only two days after our initial discovery (see picture below for a peek at those beautiful chompas!). So now she will have her bottom two front teeth for Christmas!. As far as her teeth go, she is still chewing quite a bit and drooling allot, I'm not sure if that's because they are still working their way up through the gums or if more teeth are coming soon?. I have been bitten on more than one occasion while nursing and I cant say I'm a fan of that, after a stern "NO" though she stops and begins to eat properly again. The first time I said it to her in my stern/angry voice she almost burst into tears, I realised it was the first time I had ever spoken harshly towards her. Poor baby, but a hug and kiss let her know I wasn't angry with her.

Buggito tries each day to figure out this crawling thing but its tough work so we haven't mastered it yet. That doesn't mean little Miss hasn't adapted ways of coping with her need to explore and limited mobility. She has learned to pull the tray of remotes on the coffee table towards herself to reach them after Mommy has put them out of reach. She has discovered how to get onto her belly gently from a sitting position, and when something is out of reach you can always try rolling sideways towards it. So it wont be long before Mommy and Daddy have to do a child proofing inventory of the house and the puppies will need to learn how to dodge allot faster.

Yesterday morning we went to Daddy's Christmas party for the kids, Buggito was the youngest one there but that didn't stop her from being the best behaved one as well :). Seeing the look on all the kids faces when Santa showed up to give out presents was priceless! I thought Buggito would have been more interested in all the children and toddlers there but the silver spoon at the table got most of her attention. I wouldn't call her shy but she definitely doesn't give her smiles away too easily to strangers. She has even been nervous and clingy when I had a friend over to the house that she has seen a few times before. It took her about an hour to decide she liked her and to start to smile and play with her.

As far as November goes that's pretty much it for the big news, baby is growing like a weed and our thoughts are geared towards Christmas :).

we cut our first tooth!!!!

So the months of excessive drooling and chewing have finally paid off!! I stuck my finger in babies mouth to feel for a tooth and lo and behold our bottom left hand side front tooth has poked through the gums! Once this tooth has emmerged fully I will post a pic of it in all its pearly white splendor!!!!.

October update!!!

October was an interesting month for 'Buggito', she began the month with only a slight ability to hold herself up in the sitting position. A skill she managed to master by months end. Although she had made a few accidental turns in the past few months, October Buggito saw the light and discovered it was SHE that had the power and ability to make this happen. The result of which was pointless and gratuitous flipping over onto her stomach. October we got some good giggles still no belly laughs...I guess were not as funny as we thought.

She is getting much better at standing up for longer periods of time holding only our fingers for support, She has also mastered the ability to pull herself up into a sitting position with our hands. She has even done a few "crunches" when she leans too far back into a pillow to get herself sitting up right again. Crawling mechanics are being experimented with, Buggito has learned how to move ever so slightly using the inch worm technique. I estimate by December she will be crawling all over the house...Look out Mushu and Foxy!!!

October was also interesting as it was the first time I got to play single parent, Daddy went to Saskatchewan for 10 days leaving me and baby behind. I was a bit nervous at first because after a long day of taking care of baby its nice sometimes to pass her off and get a break. With Chris gone I really didn't have anyone to tag me out. But the time went by fine enough, the baby was really good while he was gone. We only had one bad day but a bath and a nap managed to restore both baby and me to our easy going selves. I was also able to rearrange the living room and finish knitting the babies Oilers sweater while he was gone.

Buggito has now decided her waking moments are best spent exploring/experimenting with her toys rather than just snuggling with mom and dad and passively watching the world. Daddy bought her the Toy Story 3 talking phone and a colorful Ring Stacker which are currently the bees knees in my house. Looking at them reminds me of the good old days where I vowed I would not have a home cluttered with primary colored plastic toys!. In my defense though I wasn't the one who brought them into the house. Sometimes Daddy's have to do things their way too.

Its hard to believe that a little over 5 months ago this little person was just a squirmy bump inside my belly. Each day we get to see a bit more of her personality as she begins to express herself more vocally and physically. She is generally a pretty laid back baby, full of smiles and loves to cuddle. She is shy with strangers at first but after a bit of coaxing is happy to share her smiles with the public. She is generally patient and doesn't mind waiting a few minutes on a diaper change or a feeding but once she has reached her limit she has no problem letting you know. She is not big on crying and will use it as a last resort preferring to make whine/fuss noises or to yell angry babble at us first :).

The last exciting milestone for Baby was her first Halloween, I still have to book our family portraits and will post them once done. For Halloween baby wore her Dragon suit and went trick or treating with Daddy, they hit 4 neighbourhood houses and stayed to visit at each for at least 15 minutes or so. She even went to visit a set of neighbours who are related to the family who used to own this house, they gave her a toonie in her bucket because that's what the older man who lived here used to give the kids. Her little loot bucket was full despite us telling people she didn't need any treats this year. Next years trick or treating should be lots of fun as she will be able to walk to each house and understand whats going on a bit better.

That is pretty much October in a nutshell!

September update!

What to say about the month of September? September has been filled with lots of changes for Buggito. She has just had her 4 month immunization, today's doctor visit has her weighing 17 lbs and 8 ounces, she is 69 cm long/tall, still in the 98th percentile for growth. Chris and I stopped off for some McDonald's the other day and another baby was fascinated by Buggito. It turns out this baby was a year old and she was only slightly bigger than Buggito is now. She is wearing her 6-9 month size sleepers now so I have been slowly adding some bigger size outfits to her wardrobe so she wont be naked by the time she outgrows her current clothes.

I also had to retire her swing as she is too heavy for it to swing properly any longer, and we had a minor scare. I had put her in her swing to finnish doing up dishes and I heard her going "HEEEEEEY______HEEEEEEEY", as she normally makes a bit of a peep I just talked over my shoulder telling her "momma will be right there". I finnished putting down what I was doing and turned to check up on her and she was halfway out of the swing. Her legs and Butt were hanging over the edge and her little torso and head were still inside. I ran acrossed the room and scooped her up no worse for wear, I on the otherhand almost had a heart attack!.

Buggito enjoys screaming and screeching for fun, babbling on the phone to my mom and growling at Daddy and me!. She has also become much more interested in her surroundings and her toys, she really likes her Fisher Price happy apple and her frog clip on toy. She is enjoying her baby Einstein activity center and she really loves being read to. Her two favourite books right now are "Baby boo" and "oh baby, go baby". She loves standing with assistance, as soon as you get her up she usually puffs her little chest out and makes the excited/ proud face sometimes accompanied by a roar of triumph. Another activity baby enjoys now is shopping with momma :), she loves being in her sling and looking through the stores at the mall with me.

The down side to having a baby that loves the world around her is now she has deemed naps to be the enemy. She is so afraid of missing something exciting any hint of a nap and she begins to cry, fuss and shout. Its gotten to the point her once favourite lullaby "pure imagination" now causes her to cry because she knows it puts her to sleep. I have to either trick her into sleeping by casually reclining her while I bounce on the yoga ball or force her into a laying position and put up with her struggling and whining for the five minutes of fighting she puts up before latching on to nurse then sleep.

I wish I could say there was allot of excitement going on here for September but it has been pretty dull, just trying to get used to Buggito's new preferences and schedule. It seems just when you get comfortable in your routine she decides to change it up on you. Im hoping I am able to finnish my Halloween costumes on time for a family Halloween photo, I have started my costume but baby's new need for entertainment and stimulation have forced me to work in the small alloted nap periods. Thats pretty much September in a nutshell!