for the record!

For the official record!An entire week after her first birthday! baby took her first steps Friday May 27th, since then she has been ever so slowly walking all over the house!!!

March, April and May

I'm back at last!!! Mwa hahahaha!! Updating my blog is becoming increasingly more difficult now that baby is so mobile. It always seems the one overlooked item that she shouldn't have is the thing that she finds in every room she visits so constant surveillance is absolutely mandatory. Gone are the days of leaving her on the play mat because she cant get into any trouble.

Lots to update in Buggito's world, she now has 8 teeth her top and bottom 4 front teeth are in place, shes cruising like mad, she can stand unassisted for a decent period of time. She walks well while holding your hands and has developed a taste for some foods like tofu, asparagus, cheese, potatoes, noodles, chicken, tuna (still not rice cereal though). She can say "mama", "daddy", "mumu", (mushu the dog), "bup" (up), "baby", "no" and "oh no". Despite the words not being understandable she also has no problem holding her hand out (talk to the hand style) and yelling at you in baby gibberish when the diva mood strikes her. She also scrunches up her face and goes "oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh" if she either really likes or dislikes something.

She went for her first vacation with Mommy this April, we flew from Sydney to Vancouver to go visit Auntie, Grandma & Grandpa for two weeks (she was so good on the plane). On our vacation we went to the Aquarium, the petting farm, shopped around downtown Vancouver, went to the states for some more shopping! We went to Rossland, B.C and the hot springs, we visited friends and family throughout the lower mainland it was a great trip!. Buggitto loved being the center of attention wherever we went.

When we got back home it was time for Mommy to start planning a first Birthday party for her. I spent a big chunk of the month between April and May being nostalgic about the same time last year. Remembering the anticipation for baby to arrive, recalling the little belly boots I would cherish when I was pregnant. As the babies original due date came and went I remembered my frustration about having to wait for her to arrive. I recalled the two times we were sent to the hospital for an induction that never managed to happen. It was only a short year ago that all these things occurred but it may as well have been another lifetime, its so hard to remember life before Buggitto came into the world.

Not that I dont have the memories any longer when I say "life" I guess I'm meaning its so hard to get myself back into the pre-baby head space. What things mattered before baby? It all seems kind of silly in retrospect. How many little things angered me disproportionately, what did I focus my life and time and attention on?, what were my moral values. Its amazing how much having a baby changes you. It may be just having a real purpose, something that matters makes a bigger difference than just being carried down the stream of life.

Having Buggitto has helped me to see what is important more clearly than before, so many negative people and material things I have wasted time and energy on that can be easily snipped away and life is not any worse for their loss. With the limited amount of time in my life now for things outside of motherhood, you really learn how to prioritize what to spend your energy on. I have a great family and great friends and few other things in this world matter than those you love. The rapid pace of baby's growth has also really hit home the importance of cherishing each moment because once those moments are passed they are gone forever never to be repeated again. Live for the moment because this moment is all you have.

I am getting myself mentally prepared to begin properly weaning Buggito now that she has turned one and can go straight to whole milk bypassing formula altogether. So funny how much the thought of breastfeeding disturbed me when I first became pregnant, and now the knowledge that it is coming to an end saddens me more than I thought would be possible. Its just one more cord to cut severing my sweet little one from the world of baby and preparing her for the next stage of life~Toddler. So many things you look forward to doing with your child when they are older you forget all the things that you wont be doing any longer, a bittersweet trade off.

But I digress, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!!. I had invited friends from work to come to baby's big day we had about 10-12 people here to celebrate with us. As we have no family out here and are a bit isolated we have very few occasions to host a large get together. I enjoy hosting a good party with great food and I went all out. At work I decorated baby's red velvet cake with butter cream icing. Once home I made sub platters of chicken and tuna salad sandwiches, potato salad, pasta salad, cucumber salad, deviled eggs, sushi,we bought a shrimp ring and a fruit and veggie platter, homemade spinach dip and salsa, home made cream tarts, cheesecake tarts, cupcakes, snicker doodles and blueberry crepes. We made a punch bowl of Shirley Temple for guests and served coffee, and tea. Not to toot my own horn but *toot* I got started on this after a nine hour shift at work! Of course Chris helped me with the cleaning and some of the mixing and between that and the decorating we somehow managed to pull it all together in time for babies big day. We ended up with so much food left over that Chris packed up plates of sweets and sandwiches and took them around to the neighbors and he enjoyed doing that!!.

Baby received some books, a dvd, 5 baby dolls, a ride on walker, a xylophone, some sweet little outfits, a hello kitty towel and cutlery. She was more interested in all the people playing with her which was good ,I'm glad she got to have a day with a room full of people there for her making her feel special. We did birthday cake and gave her a cupcake to smash up, as soon as she got a tiny bit of icing on her hands she was disgusted and tried wiping it off in her hair. I tried feeding her a little bit but she made the grossed out face and shuddered she wanted no part of her cupcake! We gave her a stick of raw asparagus and she began to happily chomp it up. Once presents and cake were over everyone began to trickle out, the whole affair lasted for about 2.5 hours a good amount of time for baby who was ready for a nap shortly thereafter.

Now I am waiting to make a mold of her 1 year old hand and foot tonight, I did one of her hand and foot at 6 weeks and she is already about doubled in size. I'm also getting ready to take her in for her 12 month shots next week and once she has healed up from that we begin the weaning process. It wont be much longer before little one makes her first solo steps so I am keeping the video camera close and charged and hoping to catch the magic on film of some sort. Other than that life is going on as usual.

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!!!!.