Update post

It's been a while since I posted an update and as opposed to laziness being the reason, it's actually because we've been very busy these past few weekends.

The first weekend in March we hosted friends for dinner on Saturday night. I made roast beef, whipped potatoes and a broccoli dish that turned out quite well. We hoped that Maddie would cooperate (especially as we planned on dinner at 6pm, so that we could still do her bath routine at 7:30 like always). Unfortunately the little miss was incredibly grumpy while we ate dinner, took longer than usual to go to sleep after her bath and then awoke every 45 minutes afterwards until our guests left at around midnight. It was pretty frustrating, and even after they left it took me another hour to get her down to sleep for the night.

Another *fun* turn of events that started that same Saturday was a lovely nursing strike that miss Maddie decided to go on. This means that every time I knew she was hungry and it was time for her to feed, she would start crying her head off and fight me like crazy. It took a little bit to figure out that she would fight less if I laid down with her in the bed to nurse - which is what we had to do for almost every feed for the rest of the week. Yes, that's right, this fun little nursing strike lasted a full week. I was ready to quit breastfeeding altogether and as quickly as it started, it (knock on wood) went away. I think it was probably teething (we went to the doctor to make sure it wasn't an ear infection) - but no teeth have popped through yet, and so we wait some more...

Thursday that week, we had a visit from Grandma Thompson - she came up until Monday morning, so it was a nice long visit with Maddie. We did a bit of shopping, but mainly stayed around the house. On Saturday night Grandma babysat little Maddie while Seth and I went out to dinner. We had a great dinner (even though the restaurant was surprisingly packed for all the snow we got that night). Unfortunately Maddie gave Grandma a pretty hard time the entire time we were gone - although she was asleep by the time we got home, doing little sobs in her sleep and all that drama! Oh well, as sad as it was to hear that she cried almost the entire time we were gone, on Sunday was when she gave up her nursing strike - so while it was a traumatic night for Grandma and Maddie, it was a happy Sunday for all of us as she was back to feeding properly.

After spending practically the entire week sick and in bed as much as Maddie would let me, this past weekend was again busy. I had lunch with the girls on Saturday afternoon, and then went out to dinner with Greg & Liz that night (shout out to Rob & Vone - thanks again for babysitting - woot woot!). After dinner, we headed back over to Rob & Vone's to have a few drinks (well, not me, the DD) and play some Guitar Hero. I was so nervous leaving Maddie a 2nd Saturday in a row, and apparently she did cry a fair bit, but not as much as the previous Saturday. She was actually cuddling in sleeping on Kelly when we got there - with a little homemade sign on her back that said "FURNACE!". Too funny. She is a little heat box - she gets that from her daddy!

So that catches us all up - except on the most important news. Well, 2 things actually. First - Maddie has learned to roll from her back to her front - she started doing it on Sunday, March 2nd - Seth witnessed this milestone first when she was on her playmat, reaching for one of her blocks. She doesn't do it regularly, but definitely more often than she has rolled from tummy to back.

The 2nd big news item for us is that Seth got a new job! He starts on March 24th as the District Sales Manager - Ontario for Columbia Manufacturing Ltd., a maker of skylights. So he will be taking care of all the Home Depot, Rona etc. accounts across the province after a week of training in BC. His last day with Enterprise is tomorrow morning - he should be home to us by early afternoon and then he has the rest of the week off to spend with his girls.

We have some errands we want to get done around the house this week, and Seth is going to see what he can do about buying a car. We're also planning on trying some 'sleep training' with Maddie - starting tonight actually. I expect it will be a long week - but hopefully it will be successful... yes, as you can see - we're still obsessed about the sleep here! :)

xxoo.S

Dear Miss Maddie,

Today is your 5th month birthday and I can't believe how much you have grown! I already have a list of things that I miss about you - stages you've past and I know we'll never see again. It's a cliche and I'm sure when you are getting ready to have a baby far too many people will tell you this - but it's true - enjoy every moment, because they pass quickly and you'll wish you could turn back time.

• The number one thing I miss right now is just how tiny you were. It seemed like forever I could carry you in one arm, and then *poof* you were too big for that.
  
• Growing so big means that you don't fit into the sling in a cradle anymore - and that used to be the surefire way for you to catch some zzzz's and for me to get some stuff done around the house. Now trying to wrestle you into the sling just results in a lot of tears usually, unless we do the sit up position, then you're happy as a lark.
• Again, on the size thing - how you used to fit perfectly, laying down, onto a pillow. Anyone (you weren't picky) could cuddle you on their lap laying on that pillow.
• How easy you were to keep happy - you didn't have much interest in doing a whole lot except eat, sleep and eat some more - and you'd sleep on (and for) anybody. Now you're very mommy-centric, and while I'm flattered, it makes me sad for daddy - who very much misses his naps with his little girl. And I very much miss his ability to get you to sleep back then - it's a tough job now, especially when it lies fully on my shoulders to do so.
• How arching back or crying usually just meant you were gassy - not that you wanted out of my arms (you never wanted that!) and down on the floor to play by yourself. Yes, you've grown into a very independent-minded young miss, especially for just 5 months!
• Sleep - ah, the lovely rhythm we'd fallen into - getting you into bed by 10pm, you waking up at 4 for a feed, 6 for a feed, then up by 8. It was short-lived and I didn't appreciate it enough while it lasted.
  
• Saving the best for last ... your regular once a day poops. It was like clockwork, I'd sit you up on my lap for a bit in the morning and you'd go, we'd change the dipe, and be done with it for the day. Now I wait in anticipation if today will be the day and because it's usually every 3, 4, sometimes even 5 days you go - if today is the day, it's a nightmare mess resulting in the usage of at least 5 baby wipes.

Don't get me wrong - I'm loving all these new developmental milestones that you are approaching - you know your name now (that's sooooo cool I think) regardless of who says it. You smile at absolutely everyone. You giggle (if I work really hard at it). You play play play as much as possible - grabbing at things (including the kitty), trying to roll from your back onto your stomach, sometimes achieving the tummy to back rollover. You can sit up now so well in your bumbo - no more slumping. In fact, you can almost sit up by yourself - I just help you with your balance now. You talk a lot - including screeches when you want something that you can't get/reach/have. You've started drinking from (read: playing with) a sippy cup. You started solids this weekend (rice cereal) and loved it. You wake up in the best mood - so smiley. And you smile at me from across the room if I say "hi Maddie!".

I know that in a few months I'll look back at some of these things and miss them because you'll have continued to grow up and leave some of these quirks behind. I can't believe that I thought of going back to work at 6 months - you couldn't tear me away from taking the entire year off now. I absolutely love watching you grow up and learn something new every day and am so glad that we have 7 more months of this. But am also completely blown away at how quickly these 5 months have gone.

So happy birthday sugar pop!

Love Mommy.

xxoo

Irony is...

... a baby that sleeps 1+ hour (and counting) on a day when you actually were depending on the 1/2 hour nap. Our household is currently on hold, as we had planned on being out of the house by now - on our way to Costco to do some errands/grocery shopping. A later than usual nap, combined with longer than usual, means that we are just that - on hold.

To the babysleepgods: Not that I'm complaining. Honestly - I'm not...

xxoo.S

PS - Am in the midst of reading "The No Cry Sleep Solution" and plan to start it on Monday. Will keep you all informed of the progress. This may be the future baby shower present to everyone I know... here's hoping!

Roll over milestone!

I left Maddie on the floor today playing with some toys on her tummy and went to the fridge to grab some yogurt. When I came back to the living room, there she was on her back! I put her back on her tummy and after a few minutes she had managed to roll over onto her back again.

I know I said she had rolled over before, but it was always when I was playing with her, trying to show her how. This was definitely unassisted and uncoached. Yay - milestone day!

xxoo.S

Have we turned a corner ...

s...or is it just a blip? I'm not sure - but I put lil miss Maddie down for her morning nap at 9:30 sharp - she went down in just 6 minutes (as in, went so asleep that her binkie fell out of her mouth and she didn't care) and she's STILL asleep!?! It is now 10:45 and counting...

I usually have a quick bath or shower while she has her morning nap - and so for the past 45 minutes I've been sitting here in my bathrobe deathly afraid of going into the bedroom to get clothes in fear of waking our little sleeping beauty up.

Instead I uploaded all my recent photos to Walmart for printing, checked my email, posted on friends' blogs and am now posting this. About 20 minutes ago I heard one loud cry and I thought that was that, but she seems to have fallen back to sleep...

Sorry to ramble - it's just so shocking, and a little unnerving... but don't worry, I'm not going to do anything crazy like go in and check to see if she's still breathing. At least not until 11:30...

xxoo.S

New pics posted ... oh and still no sleep

I'd love to give you all an update on the sleep and say that my 'tactics' have started to succeed ... sadly they have not. In fact I have given up entirely on the crib as I didn't want it to have a negative association for her and that seemed to be the direction we were headed in. So she takes her morning nap in the cradle and all subsequent naps have either been in my arms, on me, beside me (in the bed) or in the carseat (while we're out). I took the advice of a few friends and decided that I'd worry about breaking bad habits later and just do whatever it takes right now to get some sleep - at least for the next couple of weeks until we're all back on an even keel. So for now, we're back to getting her more sleep and hopefully we start to see that positively affecting her nighttime sleep ...

As promised, here's a few pics from the past couple of weekends (lots more uploaded on our Flickr account)....

Big smiles for her Auntie Liz

And more big smiles for Auntie Steffie (she loved all the attention for girls' weekend)!

And last, but not least, here's Maddie in her brand new baby sled (a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Vallier) - we pulled her around the backyard in it last weekend...

Maddie and I went to a movie today (love the movies for mommies idea - although I missed a bit of dialogue from all the screaming babies, but couldn't really be annoyed as Maddie was one of them a few times) - Definitely, Maybe - good chick flick. That's all the updates for now, nothing much more to tell.

xxoo.S

It is a battle and I WILL win...

We continued our quest for sleep this week - and as I realize that one can never go into battle unarmed, I decided to educate myself re: baby sleep as much as humanly possible. Apparently there is a 30 min 1st sleep that is light (i.e. easily woken) and many babes have issues falling back to sleep when they wake from this 1st cycle. However if you can get them into the 2nd cycle, it's often 1.5 hrs of a deeper sleep (that is also better for them on the growth/development shiznay). Add those 2 cycles up and what do you have? The long-lost, coveted 2 hour nap!

Okay - so now I knew what I was working towards (and knowing that this was a better sleep for her development we've now added guilt to the mix - along with frustration should I fail). Tactics that were employed include the following:

• room darkening (using both the roller blinds and dark brown drapes on her windows to block out any potential waking daylight)
• white noise (using a space heater, I would get the room nice and warm and then switch to "fan only" to keep the noise consistent)
• swaddling (was doing this arms-out for most naps before, have started to employ the arms-in approach - same as she gets for nighttime sleep)
• rocking (getting her close to sleep, droopy eyes, relaxed body - but not entirely asleep so she knows she's going to bed)
• shhhhhh-ing (both while rocking and after she's been laid down in her crib)
• lovey (not sure what this does, but has been recommended by a few ppl, so started putting her to bed with this stuffed-animal-head-with-a-blanket-body thing)
• music (Bob Marley to be specific - and only while she's being rocked to sleep - it gets turned down after she's laid down. Why Bob you ask? I'm not sure - never was a huge fan myself, but happened to put it on one day and she fell asleep magically. I understand the fact that we're all individuals in regards to taste in music - so I'm following my daughter's lead. And to be honest, Bob's growing on me now. Wow - tangent.)

This nap routine sounds a lot more complicated than it really seems to be when I'm doing it. Usually we have success in getting her to sleep in about 15 mins if I catch her right at the yawning, tired eyes stage. If I let it get to the rubbing-eyes stage I'm absolutely screwed - it then takes about 45 mins to get her to sleep.

Then, when she wakes up in 15 mins or 30 mins (depends on her mood) I rush back upstairs, pick her up, and rock her back to sleep. Then we get a bit of a longer period out of the 2nd sleep (haven't got the full 1.5 hrs yet, but hopefully soon).

Yes, this is my life. Full-on strategic battle against poor napping habits. I'm hoping this whole routine, kept consistent, will eventually teach her how to nap for longer periods and that we'll figure out an actual schedule. Who knows. I know when my mom reads this she will tut to herself, thinking, you're spoiling this child. Just let her fuss and she'll eventually go back to sleep. Lay her down on a schedule and she'll learn that it's nap time.

Well, let's face it, I'm a bit of a softie apparently (who knew - I thought the cast iron bitch in me would extend to all facets of my life, guess not). And I'm hoping, much like dog-training, that the consistency of the above routine will eventually work.

Yes, I just compared child-rearing to dog-training. That's right. I said it...

xxoo - S.

Sleep ... ha! What's that?

Yes, we are once again sleepless in our household. Naps are a thing of the past. Our bedtime routine is shot to shit. Sleeping > 3 hr chunks seems a ridiculous pipe dream.

I don't think it's the crib that did it, as we were having nap issues before that. But adding crib transition to the mix? Yeah, didn't work out so much.

Madds nighttime sleep was pretty regulated at bathtime ~ 7:30pm, massage and then sitting on my lap doing a double feed ~ 8:30pm, sleeping in a deep sleep ~ 9:30pm. From there, we'd get an uninterrupted 6 hours, and she'd get up around 4-ish for another feeding and come into bed with me to sleep until 8.

Yeah, so now we're bad to random wakings at 1am, 3am, 5am and up for the day by 7am. Wha? Oh, and with zero propensity to nap during the day (honestly - she went for 6 hours yesterday afternoon/evening without napping AT ALL) - that means I can't get a nap either, so am quickly regressing to sleepdeprivedwalkingzombie state that I was so accustomed to only a few short months ago.

So, needless to say, as of last night, she's back in the cradle beside our bed. And while she did wake up a lot last night, I was able to soothe her by a) reinsertion of binkie; b) shhhhhhhhhh-ing her; and c) rocking the cradle. It definitely helped me as I can do those 3 things in my sleep (no pun) whereas actually getting up to try to do those things in another room wakes me up (and a non-rocking crib means she has to be lifted out to be soothed, and then she refuses to go back in - why don't they make cribs that rock??).

In my desperation to figure out why we were going through this torture yesterday, I did find a website that outlined a "4 month sleep regression" stage that babes can go through - something to do with both physical and mental developments beings so fast + furious right now, that they just find it hard to sleep and life generally just sucks for a few weeks to a month. Then things get better. Then things get worse. Then things get better. Then things get worse. Then they graduate and go away to school...

xxoo S.

PS - as a side note - Seth went ice fishing for the weekend and I had my friend Stef up to visit - we had a blast and it was nice to have a girls weekend. Will post some pics soon!

Today's the big day...

We're going to put Maddie in her crib tonight to sleep. I've been putting her in her crib for naps this week - well, when she DOES nap. Which this week, isn't very often at all. And not for very long either. But I'm trying to stick with it as I'm told consistency is the key.

So I fully expect that tonight is going to be a pretty sleepless one, but we'll see how it goes. I'm not sure what's going on with our little girl this week, but it seems like her schedule was blown completely off since the weekend. She hasn't been napping properly (now I'm lucky to get 30 minutes out of her - before she was at least consistently napping 45 mins), I have to put her down asleep, not awake like I was able to before and her bedtime routine was messed up too. Luckily (knock on wood) I think we've gotten a better handle on it - at least her bedtime routine seemed back to normal last night.

She was crying a lot (poor thing) and chewing like crazy on anything we gave her, so I wonder if it was a teething episode - although it seems to have gone away and no teeth popped through (you can't even feel any buds), so that explanation doesn't make much sense anymore. Oh well, they do say once you get a routine down and working for you that they go and change things up again - maybe that's all this was? Who knows - I'm certainly no expert, just trying to follow her lead.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Enjoy the people you love today (and every day after). We're forecast to get more snow tonight just in time for Seth's drive home ... which will make for another late night (3 in a row - as if he doesn't get home late enough, now he doesn't get home before 8pm).

Love to you all!

S.

PS - you'll notice I changed the signature to "S" as opposed to "S&S" ... let's face it - we all know Seth isn't writing any of these. He doesn't even check this blog, so he has no idea what is being written on here. Haha.

Things I will miss

One of the girls in the online community I'm part of (babyfit.com) posted an interesting topic the other day - about the little things that she hopes she'll always remember about her little one. It was sweet and a lot of us joined in listing the various things that we will miss as our babies get older - there's so many, but I wanted to write some of them down on our blog so I would actually remember them (for sure this blog is going to be better for memories than the baby books). So here is my list - I will miss...

• Her little coughs she makes to get attention
• Kicking my belly as I dry her off after her bath and get her dressed
• Her sour milk breath in the mornings
• Her perfect gummy smiles - I keep taking pictures to make sure I don't forget what it looks like!
• The way she reaches out to touch my face with both her hands when I lean over her (that one is new and I love love love it)
• Her phantom sucking when she's in a deep sleep (that's her mouth + tongue doing the sucking thing, after her binkie has fallen out)
  
• The way her mouth drops open when she's totally passed out
• Her giggles - when you can get one out of her - I love these first laughing sounds
• The way she reaches out to pet the cats when they walk by now - she's finally discovered they exist!
• Her huge happy grins in the morning - I've never been a morning person but that can't help but make you smile when you see how happy someone is to see you when they wake up - makes me feel like the centre of her world

She has a few more sleepers that she's grown out of - which makes me so sad. I love seeing grow and learn new things, but it's also sad to see how quickly this time goes. I honestly didn't think I'd enjoy this baby stage so much, and now that I am, it's hard to see how quickly the time goes.

S&S

Teething + roadtrips = cranky baby

Well this past weekend wasn't one for the record books. We traveled to Kingston on Thursday evening as we had a funeral to attend on Friday morning - Seth's (maternal) grandmother passed away. It was a sad reason to have to travel that is certain, but I think Maddie's grandma Vallier enjoyed seeing her - hopefully it cheered her up some.

We had to head home on Friday night as Seth worked Saturday morning - which was a bummer. I think the trip really tired her out (and all the visiting with many relatives on very little sleep), as she ended up having a 3 hour nap on Saturday morning. I should say 'we' actually - she was acting sleepy but very cuddly around 10:30 in the morning, having been up for a couple of hours, so I brought her up to the bedroom to put her down and laid down beside her to help her settle. Well I guess I was a little tired as well, as I fell fully asleep and the next thing we knew it was 1:30 pm and Seth was home ... oops! At least she was in better spirits on Saturday with all that sleep.

Too bad we can't say the same for Sunday. We had her down for several naps in the morning, so I'm not sure what happened. I left with Liz to watch a movie (27 Dresses - it was good, but definitely rental material) at 1:30pm and when I got home at 4pm, Seth was a little down. Apparently Miss Maddie wasn't very happy most of the time and fussed a lot and generally just made it very tough on Daddy. So we let him go play video games while we played quietly upstairs.

Nothing else to report - well, except that the bookshelves are almost done. Working on getting the doors on today - which means then I can start loading them. Very exciting. It's so funny to think that Maddie will never know that front room without those bookshelves. Strange.

Gotta run as I hear rustling - she only slept for 20 mins, the little bugger. She's being fussy again today a lot - I really think she is teething now. Not sure how else to explain this behaviour, and the drooling, and the rash on her face, and the constant chewing of things...

S&S

Snowbaby

We have had a tonne of snow dumped on us in the past 36 hours - once again we look like we live in a Norman Rockwell painting - it's nice actually. I just wish Maddie was old enough to go outside and enjoy it.

After we got back from our mom group today, Madds was asleep in her carseat, so I quickly took her upstairs near the monitor and hightailed it outside to attempt to clear off some of the driveway. Seth had cleared it last night when he got home from work, but of course it snowed another 6 inches overnight. It was heavy work, but I got about 1/2 of the driveway done before I heard Maddie crying over the monitor (handy that they have a good range on them!). So I went upstairs to get our little munchkin and bundle her up for some snowy photo ops. One of our neighbours was out shoveling her driveway as well, and took this pic of me and Madds:

And after some digging in the snowbank ... here's my little snow angel:

Maddie has been really great this week - I think we are finally past whatever was bothering her last week (growth spurt? teething? who knows). She's been sleeping so well - going down for naps regularly in her cradle and sleeping for up to an hour sometimes (doesn't seem like a lot, but she's a habitual 30-minute napper, so this is a big step!).

I tried her in her Jolly Jumper yesterday (again, had tried a couple of weeks ago and she was still too small for it) ... she's still a little tiny in it, but she seems to like it and is learning quickly how her legs make her bounce!

And lastly, I'll leave you with the promised pic of our little girl in her cute little sweater dress that she wore to the Superbowl party last weekend - honestly, I know I'm biased, but does it get any more adorable??

Love to all...
S&S

4 month shots

Poor lil miss. She had her 4 month well-baby check up today, which included the 2nd round of immunization shots. I had prepared this time by giving her a dose of baby tylenol before leaving the house, but I'm not sure it helped dull the pain that much. Our poor little Madds just screamed her head off when the nurse gave her the 2 shots. She actually turned purple and stopped breathing in order to scream - it was not fun at all.

Afterwards she slept like a maniac in the drive out of Toronto - and we headed to a mommy + me movie date (saw Dead Like Her - not good). She woke up at the theatre and started to get a little scream-y there, so I gave her a dose of baby motrin and she went right back to sleep (after a little cry). Since we got home at 3:30 she's had 2 naps. I'm guessing tomorrow is going to be a quiet day for her.

She got weighed and measured at this appointment - according to their scale, she's 12 lbs 9 oz (obviously their scale is weighing her a little lighter than the one at the breastfeeding clinic - although I don't get her naked for that weigh in so perhaps that can account for the discrepancy?). And her height is now 24-1/2 inches (just over 2 feet!). The doctor is happy with her growth - she's around the 60th percentile for height and growing right on the curve for the 25th percentile in weight. So she's a bit taller than average, but much lighter than average. She's a tiny one (just like her mom ... er ... used to be).

S&S

Busy weekend, busy baby

We just got through one of our busier weekends in a while. Spent Saturday doing stuff around the house and trying to convince Maddie to sleep. I don't know what was going on this past week with our little girl, but she was really out of character. A lot of crying in the early evening. Some temper tantrums. Weird feeding habits (one day going for 4 hours at a time without eating, the next day eating every hour on the hour). In general when she wasn't sleeping or feeding, she was whiny. Like half crying, half moaning, half squealing (but not in a good way usually). And hard to console. Try to give her more food, she'd get angry. Try to cuddle her to sleep, she'd get angry. Try to leave her to play on her own, she'd get angry.

I tried using Camilia a few times (it's a homeopathic remedy for teething that has been suggested to me by a lot of moms) - I think it worked. Or we started using it just as she was coming out of this weird phase she was in.

Saturday evening we had plans to go to a friends house from some poker playing and getting together with a few couples with babes (or ones on the way). It was good, except for the first time, like ever, Maddie was not the most well-behaved person in the room. In fact, she was the crying, fussy baby. Not that I care, I realize we've gotten it super easy so far, so a few fussy nights when we're out should be expected. It's just a bit disconcerting when you're in a strange house and she's wailing and you can't do anything to calm her down ... fortunately Seth seemed to have the magic touch that night and was able to get her chilled out enough to fall asleep for a little bit. She didn't want anything to do with me - that's okay, I wasn't offended... ;)

But since we got home kinda late on Saturday night, her sleep schedule was thrown right off on Sunday and she slept most of the day away. In my lap - ha. Which means I didn't get a whole lot done around the house like I wanted to before we headed out to a Superbowl party at a friend's house. Another child-friendly event, and this time Maddie got totally dressed up for it. Will have to post the pics soon as her little sweater dress is the cutest thing you've ever seen.

The party was good and we got to see a bunch of friends we haven't seen in ages, which is always fun. Maddie was behaving much more normally last night, so she wasn't too whiny and didn't have one temper tantrum (yay!). And even though she was out later than her bedtime again last night, she seems to be back on her sleeping schedule now. Currently down for her morning nap - actually I think I hear her waking up on the monitor.

So this week we have all sorts of things on our to-do list. Her doctor appointment is tomorrow - 2nd round of immunization shots ... scary! We were planning on going to the movies (mommy + me movie thing) tomorrow afternoon, but I had forgotten we had the dr appt in town, so we'll see what kind of mood she's in afterwards. Although this time I'm going to be smart about it and give her some tylenol BEFORE she gets the shots, which will hopefully help ease up the discomfort that she felt last time.

My plan for this week is to FINALLY finish the thank you cards for all the baby presents we received. Yeah, she's four months and I still haven't sent those out - yikes. Better late than never though I guess?

At last thing on the agenda - we are truly going to attempt to get Maddie sleeping in her crib this week. For naps to start with. We'll see how that goes. I'm silly nervous about it. Maybe because I realize that it's the first step to her leaving our room and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. I fully expect that she'll take the transition like a champ and I'll be the one sleepless and upset. Sad mommy.

Anyways - she definitely is awake now so I better go get her. We'll post more updates soon. Love to all!

S&S

Squealing ... oh yeah

So our little girl has more than found her voice. Lately (this week) she's really started to squeeeeeeeeeeeeal. Yeah, it's great. I don't know what makes me a worse mother...

• the fact that her squeals sometimes grate on me like fingernails on a chalkboard (only in the early evenings after a long day ... or late afternoon ... or if she has been doing it for like an hour straight)
• the fact that these new sounds mean that I can't sometimes tell if she's happy and having a grand old time, or if she's in fact, annoyed and getting angry

Now I feel like I have to work harder than before ... no fair. I thought it was supposed to get easier! ;)

S&S

PS - weighed our little Madds in at the mom group yesterday - she's up to 12 lbs 14 oz - gained 4 ounces in a week - goooooooo weight gain!

Maddie wears jeans ... and other interesting stuff

Well, like always, the week kinda flew by in a blur. On Thursday Maddie and I attended the mom group in the afternoon. Because it's hosted by public health, they have a scale there so I plopped our little Madds on it and she now weighs around 12 lbs 10 oz (I say around because I didn't strip her naked for the scale like my Dr's office usually does - maybe that added some ounces? not sure) - anyways, any concerns about our little one not gaining weight fast enough are definitely waylaid - over a pound in 3 weeks, that's not bad!

After seeing everyone's babies in actual "clothes" at the mom group (even a 1 month old that was there was wearing a proper outfit - yikes) ... I got inspired to actually start dressing my baby. Not like she was going around naked or anything, but I was happy keeping her in the footed sleepers for the rest of her life - cozy, comfy and convenient. But yeah, I have a tonne of little outfits for her, and I figured I might want to revisit them as with all this growing she's doing, they may not fit her much longer (and unlike the first couple of weeks of life when I thought I needed to dress her everyday - she may now actually FIT the clothes!) ...

So on Friday we considered a few outfits, and jointly decided on her new flower power jeans that Grandma Vallier gave her at her last visit, paired with a lovely long sleeve tee shirt (onesie) that Grandma Thompson gave her. You don't have to say it, I know she's adorable... ;)

Saturday we had a girls lunch planned - headed over to Mississauga to visit my friend Sandra, who was cooking up a feast of Thai food for the ladies. And since Madds is one of the ladies now too, she was allowed to come - haha. Seth stayed home and (finally) organized the basement so that it's not a mess of half unpacked boxes and random tools lying everywhere. Now the half-unpacked boxes are piled neatly in a corner and the tools are all put back in their respective original packaging! Haha.

And since we had started the trend of getting dressed in big girl clothes on Friday, Maddie got properly dressed for lunch - wearing an adorable fuzzy outfit from her Grandparent's friends - the Laverty's. Don't you just love the beret? Too bad we couldn't find a paint brush to go in her hand...

Saturday night we (Maddie and I) were supposed to go to a friend's house for dinner, but since their little one had developed a nasty chest cold, it ended up being cancelled (for her sake, and Maddie's). Which bummed me out a bit, but we stayed in and ordered a movie from Rogers instead. Seth had a 30th bday party to go to in the city - his friend Andrew - so he got a "night out on the town" - which resulted in a bit of a hangover the next day. Needless to say, the bookshelves (those blasted shelves, the neverending project) are still not put together, which means my plan for getting that room finally organized is still on hold... lame!

Like I mentioned, Sunday turned into a bit of a lazy day - but I did manage to go grocery shopping and we finally hooked up the chest freezer that we got for Christmas from my mom - so it is now filled with all sorts of healthy frozen goods. I'm trying this new thing called cooking this week - hopefully getting us off the take out/delivery/frozen pizza diet that we'd fallen into of late.

So that was our week in a nutshell. Today's been pretty productive for getting some chores done around the house - and of course taking pics of Maddie. She's really into playing with her toys now (started getting interested in some toys a few weeks ago and now just wants to play constantly when she's awake) - and I've started putting her on her stomach to play more and more - helps develop those muscles (tummy time!) and gives her a bit of a different vantage point I guess. Here's a cute one with her chilling out on the bed while I put away laundry - playing with the awe-inspiring links!

Last update I have for you is her latest in vocalization - she's really found her voice of late and her newest noise is sbbbrrrrrtttttt (which translated - is her sticking her tongue out and spitting) - she uses it to get your attention, to respond to questions, and just to make conversation. She uses it so often that instead of crying or fussing when she wakes up from a nap, we now hear her spitting over the monitor instead. Sitting in her cradle, spitting away, happy as a clam. I will try to upload a movie of her doing this spitting thing soon - we have a bunch of video to upload, just have to get some time to do it ... and since Madds is getting a little agitated (read: crying) right now I gotta run ... talk to you all later!

S&S

Loving the sleep!

Our little Madds slept from 10:30pm last night until 6am this morning. Got up for a quick feed and went back down until 10am. Got up again for about an hour and then went back down for another 2 hour nap.

Not sure why I felt the need to document this - but I'm loving the new sleeping (and happier) Maddie. I doubt it will last as I think this is just the tail-end of a growth spurt (they say babies always sleep lots for a couple days after going through a growth spurt) - but regardless, it's great. It's actually hard to remember those days when she hardly slept at all - not days that I would like to live again that's for sure. I'm sure she probably feels the same way - she's definitely loving her sleep nowadays, she's soooooo happy when she wakes up. Even happier than normal.

We're so lucky. :)

S&S

Roadtrip weekend

Wow, what a week. It started off with a bang - knowing that we had our long weekend/2nd Christmas trip to Kingston starting this Thursday, I had about a million things on the 'to do' list for the week. And how did I get the week started? By busting up my back!

So here's a handy tip for all our readers out there - when you sneeze, don't turn your head. It puts all this strain on some muscle that I can't remember the name of, that runs from your neck down to your ribs. I learned this the hard way - standing there changing Maddie at 8am, I had the sneezes, and kept turning my head to the right to let these monster sneezes out. After I was all done sneezing, my nose was dripping, and while stretching my right arm above my head, I did an almighty sniff and all of a sudden my neck/back/shoulder seizes up. Luckily Maddie was still on the change table (at waist height) so I didn't have to bend to lift her - I carried her into the bedroom and deposited her down onto our bed (the first time I think I was thankful for our mammothly tall bed). As she was getting hungry, I knew this was going to get tricky and my back was continuing to spasm - yikes. I called Seth and left a desperate message on his phone and managed to get myself laid down beside Maddie to feed her before she really freaked out.

Seth called back a few minutes later, and I think, hearing the panic in my voice, made the decision to leave work (on a Monday morning - their busiest time) and come to help me, as I honestly didn't know what I was going to do - I had finished feeding Maddie at this point, and laid down on the bed on my side, could now not get up. Nightmare.

Luckily, while Seth was making the hour drive back home, I was able to 'shush' Maddie to sleep while I laid there in agony, using my labour-breathing-techniques to get myself through the pain of my seizing back muscles. Once Seth got home it took us almost an hour to get me up off the bed and into the bath (which I also learned is a bad bad thing to do for pulled muscles - ice people, you should use ice, not heat). Anyways, to make a long story short, I lounged in the bath trying to feel a bit better while Seth took care of Maddie and called his mom to ask her to come up and help around the house for a couple of days. Thankfully she was able to and she was at our house by 2pm taking care of Maddie, and Seth was on his way back to work.

I was able to get myself in for a last minute appointment with a Chiropractor here in Whitby that afternoon - and he actually really helped to get me on the road to recovery. I can say that I'm now a big believer in Chiropractors - the cracking of the back is still very weird, but I felt tonnes better even after just one appointment - really!

So the rest of the week I took it pretty easy while Debbie helped out tonnes with cooking and taking care of Maddie. I managed to get the rest of the Christmas shopping done (for my family Christmas we were attending that weekend) and get us prepared for our road trip. We left Thursday afternoon and were in Kingston by 2pm - Maddie slept the whole way - such a sleeper! Since Thursday was my bday, my mom came over that evening to visit us and we all had some cake - good times.

Friday was an early morning as we had plans to be at Stef's (in Inverary) by 10am - we visited with her and her little one, Quinn for a few hours that morning. Maddie had a blast watching Quinn play with all her toys (he loved the Glo-worm especially!) - here's a pic of me and Stef with our little ones. Quinn is 9 months and huge, especially next to our tiny little Madds - she looks extra tiny in this pic!

After leaving Stefanie's we headed over to my Dad's place where we visited for several hours and exchanged Christmas gifts. Maddie started to get pretty tired (and cranky) so we headed out around 5pm. We got to Debbie & Shorty's by 5:45 and after feeding Maddie, we let Grandma do some babysitting while we went out for a dinner on our own for my birthday. Ended up downtown at Megalo's - a restaurant that used to be one of our faves, across from the theatre. Dinner was good - we had a few seafood dishes and (with the exception of the paper napkins) it was really nice. Too bad when we got home Maddie was having a bit of a fit. Apparently she was good all evening and started to cry just 5 minutes before we got home. I wasn't too bothered as it only took me a couple of minutes to calm her down, but I think Seth was a little disturbed, he just kept saying "I've never heard that cry before." Oh well, I guess we have to realize that she is going to cry sometimes and while we won't like it, it's not always going to be something we can avoid. Especially when we're not around.

The next day was our big Christmas get together with my family - Mom, Walt, Aunt Reta, Derek, Amy and their 2 little ones. So we of course had to Maddie all dressed up for the occasion. Here she is in the crib at Grandma Vallier's right before we left - don't you just love the boots?

We picked up an ice cream cake and headed out to my Aunt Reta's in Harrowsmith for the festivities. Gifts were exchanged, I played with my nieces a tonne with some of their new toys, and of course we all ate until we were ready to explode on all the nibbles and appetizers that Aunt Reta and Mom made. Maddie got a little cranky a few times, but hey this was her 4th major visit in 2 days so she was getting a little tired of all the attention I think. How priceless is this pic though, with her cousin Rebecca ...

We decided that we were going to head back to Brooklin that night instead of waiting for Sunday morning - so with a quick visit in with the Vallier's and one last stop at my Mom's house, we were back on the road and home by just after 1am. Thank goodness Maddie was out for the count and didn't wake up when we took her out of her carseat and into bed.

It was a great weekend and we enjoyed visiting everyone, but it was tiring for all of us - especially Madds. She's been sleeping a tonne ever since!

S&S

Maddie giggles

This weekend wasn't too busy for us. We relaxed on Friday night - not doing much of anything. On Saturday Maddie and I headed into the city with Auntie Liz while Seth worked in the morning - we shopped a bit in the mall (I bought leggings - I'm such a mom!) and then headed over to Lisa Deir's new apartment for lunch and a visit. It was 6pm by the time we got home and found Seth sprawled out on the couch napping - he had gotten home from work around 2pm and spent the afternoon hooking up our new home theatre system, eating some nachos and watching some football before crashing out.

To break in the new system, I went and rented us a couple of movies to watch that night - the Simpsons Movie and Superbad. The Simpsons movie - it was okay - not great in my opinion. Superbad? Super-hilarious. Seriously - rent it. Soooooo funny.

Today I just got all the Christmas decorations taken down finally and did a small grocery shop. Just enough to get us through the next couple of days as we're headed to Kingston on Thursday morning for a 4 day weekend. While I was putting away the decorations Seth was holding Maddie - and for some reason (we still can't really figure out why) she started giggling her head off - so I ran to get the video camera to get this little milestone on tape. After an hour of trying to figure out how to transfer the files from our camcorder to the computer, I've finally got it uploaded. She's laughed and done small giggles before - but nothing like this, so we wanted to share with everyone - it's too cute for words...



S&S

Evil Mommy

I am horrible. I bonked my little munchkin in the head with the tv remote (by accident of course) while she was nursing. There was a delay and then she cried her little head off. Then I cried my little head off. Then I managed to pull myself together enough to get her back nursing and we both calmed down eventually.

I've checked a million times - she doesn't have a bump on her head - so shhhhh, we won't tell Seth. :)

S&S

Sleepaholic

This week has been amazing for sleep (that is, when we finally convince her to go down - a little more fussy in the evenings than usual) - last night Maddie slept from 10pm - 6am. And if I had actually gone to bed when I put her down, that means I would have gotten 8 hours. Too bad I didn't get to bed until half past midnight...

She didn't escape from her swaddle last night (for the first time in like, ever) - which makes me wonder if that's why she slept longer? Or if she was just so worn out from yesterday (it was a bit of a tiring day - she fussed A LOT, although she did take 2 proper naps in her bassinet) that she didn't wake up enough to try and escape her swaddle. Not sure, but definitely trying to swaddle her extra tight tonight.

The other thing I was thinking is that she has had a bit of a cough (started yesterday - the day AFTER the doctor's of course), and maybe she's got a small cold which made her sleep longer? Who knows - let's just hope this is a trend that continues - and she's in a great mood this morning - all smiles and coos - currently staring at me from the swing while I'm typing this with eyes that say, you're supposed to be eating breakfast ... eat up mom so you can take me out of this...

S&S

PS - trying the mini-posts this week, as I never remember these little details for the longer ones - and it's the little details in life that you usually wish you could remember ...

Weight update

We had a doctor's appointment today and I'm happy to report that our little Miss Maddie is now 11 lbs 4 oz - she's gaining weight right on the 25th percentile curve (which is smaller than average, but so was I, so I guess she's her mother's daughter).

S&S

PS - Would also like to update that she is her Mother's daughter in more ways than one. Yesterday we were listening to Madonna together and while smiling up a storm, I swear she giggled a few times (and maybe I was dancing like a maniac in front of her)...

New Years and New Things

Well the weekend after Christmas went by in a bit of a blur. On Saturday Seth invited over a friend of his that he used to work at Enterprise with - he and his girlfriend live nearby in Whitby and also just had a little girl - so it was nice to sit down and chat with a couple of newbie parents and meet their little one. They brought Maddie a present (small toy) which of course made me feel like ass, as we hadn't gotten Farrah anything - how can you be THAT on your game right after Christmas, come on! I didn't even have cheese and crackers to put out, much less gifts to give. Oh well...

Sat night Seth and I just stayed in and cleaned up the house a bit - watched a movie and just chilled really. Sunday my mom arrived at noon (she had volunteered to come up and take care of Maddie so we could actually go out on New Year's Eve). Our friend Brian came over (in town from Alberta) to tour the house, then the boys left for Greg's to watch some Sunday afternoon football. Left to our own devices, Mom and I just relaxed and played with Maddie - not really doing much at all. On Monday Seth had to work until 3pm, so Mom and I headed over to Walmart to pick up a few things (including some yarn and needles so I can try to knit a little toque for Maddie). When we got home, Mom made a yummy Shepherd's Pie out of the left over prime rib roast that we had from xmas dinner - great pre-party stomach base!

My friend Sandra was also staying with us that evening - so we got Mom set up in the living room on the couch (her choice, we certainly didn't force her to sleep there - but it was easier for access to the kitchen for warming bottles etc) + the bassinet set up for Maddie. I showed Mom how we usually tucked Maddie in at night - swaddled and with another blanket tucked around her, receiving blanket up at her head for softness etc - she really does prefer a soft bed and most bassinets/cradles have such thin, hard little mattresses - no wonder she wasn't sleeping all that well in the beginning. And yes, I realize that you're not supposed to have "loose blankets" on a baby when they're sleeping anymore, but I guess we've found something that works - and compared to the sleepless nights (and days) we were having before...

Anyways, Mom patiently kept the eye-rolling to a minimum as I explained her bedtime routine, how to put her down, when she likes to eat/wake up etc. You'd think I was leaving her with a 12-year-old babysitter, not a mom (nurse) with years of practice...

Honestly though - it was hard for me to leave Maddie. I was feeling mainly guilty, but also sad that I wasn't going to be with her when the new year was 'rung in'. We gave her her bath before we left, so she was all swaddled up and ready for sleep and we were finally heading over the party around 8-ish. I think Seth would have liked to be heading to the party slightly earlier (to hang with the boys), but that was the earliest I was able to feel like I was ready to go - bedtime routine accomplished, we headed over to really party for the first time in almost a year (for me).

It was fun seeing everyone and letting loose a bit. We played some games, some guitar hero (that's me rocking out with Sarah Price - yeah, it's a video game, but you totally feel like you're playing the guitar, it's fun!) and had several cocktails (I did talk to Mom at midnight - to wish her a happy new year and thank her - and Maddie was up eating when I called - so she rang in the new year with Gram instead of Mommy). By 3am I was more than ready to get home, rounded up the troops and headed home (thank you DD Todd!). Maddie was asleep when we got home, and after pumping we headed to bed as well. A solid 3.5 hours of sleep for me and I was pack up Mom's car and get her on her way - with snow in the forecast, she wanted to get on the road early in the morning. So feeling a little under the weather (but not as bad as I expected - just tired really) I was back on parental duty, and our babysitter was on her way home as planned. With the snow worsening, I woke Sandra up to warn her (who had a drive to Mississauga ahead of her) - so she was gone by 8:30.

And Seth? Oh, he slept in until 3pm. Yes, you read that right. 3pm. He was feeling a little worse for wear you see, and still felt sick once he finally got up. Don't worry - he realizes that next time he gets the 3 hour sleep and I get to sleep in until whenever I want. At least I hope he realizes that...

So that was how we rung in 2008. And here we are with a little 12-week-old monkey. I can't believe how much she's changed over these 3 months - heck, I can't believe how much she changes from week to week! But with her 'official' 3 month birthday coming up in a couple of days here's a quick overview of her latest accomplishments (or quirks!)...

• Her favourite word is "Geeeeeeeeee" - said with a gurgle in her voice - it can mean, "I'm happy, you're happy, the world is great!" and it can also mean, "Geeeee - I'm tired and annoyed and you better cuddle me into a sleep very soon or I will get angry."
• She still hasn't rolled over again since that one time - in fact when we do tummy time she doesn't even seem that interested in putting up her head or trying to roll over all that much. But I guess that's what happens when they're growing or focusing on learning something else, they kind of have a one-track mind, so seem like they 'forget' the other things they were learning.
• And lately she's been focusing on...her hands! Chewing, sucking, looking at - anything to do with her hands, she's all about it. She holds her hands in front of her a lot (like she's praying) - especially if you're holding her in a cradle hold and she's sleepy. And she also is big into grasping things - like your hair if you're silly enough to wear it down, or your earrings, necklace, sweater, the edge of a blanket, Daddy's chest hair - really anything within reach she's grabbing at it and just holding on for dear life.
• Since she doesn't seem to love tummy time anymore, to help her strengthen her neck muscles we have started to put her in her Bumbo instead. She likes it (most of the time) and the gravity of sitting up seems to do something to her guts, because she LOVES to fill her diaper while in it, haha. Here's a pic of our big girl hanging out in her Bumbo, holding up her head like it ain't no thing...
• Her sleep at night is really great. We've gotten into the routine of giving her a bath around 8pm, swaddling her, feeding her and rocking her to sleep - so she's usually in bed by 9-ish and sleeps until 4 or 5am. Then she's up for a feed and back down to sleep until around 8:30am. The only bad habit that I've gotten into is bringing her into bed with me after that 5am feed - because she rarely goes right back to sleep and she will toss and turn herself right awake, but if she's laying in bed next to me, she seems to go right back to sleep so easily. We've been doing this for over a month now (when she's not sleeping well in her cradle, bringing her into bed), but as she gets older, I know we have to start really working at not creating bad habits ... so this week is our first attempt at stricter sleep routines. Meaning Mommy will try to put her down in her cradle for ALL her nighttime sleep and for her daytime naps. (Her daytime naps are often ON me, she sleeps for so much longer when cuddled in, but I know that has to stop as well - for both of us.) I'll keep you updated on our progress with that... we're hoping to have her sleeping in her own room, in her crib, by the end of the month.
• Lastly - she's still a huge morning smiler - LOVES to wake up and get changed and just sit and stare at you (while sitting in her sit-up pillow on the couch). And if she gets enough sleep during the day, her good mood/easy smiles seems to last all day. But to be honest, she's usually got a bit of a fussy period around 6:30 - just in time for when Seth gets home (poor guy). I think she's started to laugh - she makes the high-pitched sucking in breath noise that I think is a laugh, but can't really tell. Definitely no giggles yet - at least awake. This morning I woke up to her dreaming in her cradle beside me - it was around 6am (and yes, she was still in her cradle - I'm doing well so far!) - and she was making all sorts of noise, moving around etc. - but with her eyes closed. And then I see her smiling and making a 'hahahahah' noise which I have to assume is laughing. Who knows what the dream was about - but I'm glad it was a good one - she really seemed to be enjoying herself - it was the most priceless thing - first time I've really seen her dreaming like that (beyond 'sleep smiles').

So that's your Vallier update - gotta run as she's waking up from her nap - 45 minutes in her cradle - already off to a good start for our sleep routines in the New Year!

S&S

Our first Christmas

The week before Christmas was a busy one. Maddie and I spent a lot of time finishing up the shopping and cleaning up the house. On Saturday we headed to Ikea as a family to buy the bookcases for the front room - they ended up being a bit larger than we expected, so instead of piling the boxes into our car, we opted for the $69 delivery service - they arrive this Saturday - woo hoo!

After Ikea, we headed down to Rob & Vone's to wish them a very merry and drop off some xmas baking ... after a few hours visiting w/ the Emmy's, we headed back home with just enough time to get dressed, get Maddie changed and head over to Greg & Liz's for an early holiday dinner. Liz had her family visiting, an Greg's mom was there - so it was a full house. Maddie was passed around to many welcome sets of arms (here she is with Liz's dad - he was nice enough to hold her while I ate dinner!) and continued her streak of acting like a superstar - I'm hoping this streak never ends, it's always nice to have a non-crying baby when out visiting!

Here's a pic of Maddie with Mommy - taken before I changed her into her sleeper - how cute is that dress and the tights with the red shoes painted on?

Sunday was a very busy day as I went out to do some last minute shopping while Seth watched Maddie. Then after a quick dinner we spent the evening cleaning the house up to be ready for his parents who were arriving the next day to spend Christmas with us.

Poor Seth had to work a half day on Monday (Christmas Eve) and didn't get home until around 4 that afternoon. His parents arrived around noon - which was just before I was about to head out with Maddie to the butcher to pick up the roast (yes, we were blasphemous and had a roast beef for Christmas dinner, not turkey - shocker!). So Shorty and I headed out to the butcher and Grandma Vallier got some alone time with Maddie. Once we got back, I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the appetizers ready for the small get together we were hosting that evening - Greg and Liz were coming over with Greg's brother and sister-in-law, and his mom. Grandma V had brought a tonne of frozen appetizers as well, so it was a good spread. Everyone arrived around 7:30pm and we all enjoyed some "Christmas Cheer" and the munchies and chit-chatted until they left around 11pm or so.

Christmas morning came around 8:30 - Maddie's regular wake-up time and we got her up, changed and fed her as quickly as possible to try and give her the presents that Santa brought in her stocking before she fell asleep again (she likes to sleep in the mornings - A LOT!). Here's a pic of Maddie with her stocking - ignore the bedhead on the two of us! We managed to keep her interested in everything that Santa brought before she drifted off to sleep, which allowed us to open our stockings and have some morning coffee before she was back up. We unloaded the tree and then Seth went to make breakfast while I went to have a bath. After a late breakfast (brunch?) we all sat down to watch a movie and relax a bit. I put the roast beef in around 3-ish and got the potatoes and other sides ready to go.

After only a couple of hours, my first 'classic' roast was done to perfection - medium rare, just like a prime rib roast should be! Along with, we had whipped potatoes (thanks Debbie!), roasted asparagus spears with lemon, steamed green + yellow beans then sautéed with olive oil and slivered almonds, and last but not least, yorkshire puddings. I think for my first official Christmas Dinner, I did a pretty good job. Even got a Christmas pudding for dessert, in keeping with the apparent British theme to dinner - too bad that was kind of gross. Oh well, next year I will actually make one - didn't realize you needed to start it a month in advance.

Boxing Day was spent as many Boxing Days in Canada are I think - watching movies and the Juniors hockey. Grandma and Grandpa V left around 7pm and we gave Maddie a bath and then went to bed shortly thereafter - Seth had to work the next day, and to be honest we were all pretty tired.

So that's our first Christmas in a nutshell - it was enjoyable to finally be able to host a Christmas, and of course unforgettable with Maddie - even if she won't remember it, we always will!

S&S

Edited to add: Here's Maddie's pic of her with Santa - meant to scan this in a while ago - pretty cute for a 10 week old - she looks like she likes him - I'm sure she won't be so cheerful next year!

A weekend of firsts

After such a busy week, Maddie and I had a lazy day on Friday - not accomplishing much of anything. Although I did get to go out with an old colleague of mine for a few drinks while Seth took care of her in the evening. I was only gone for 3 hours, and it felt like days - I know I'm going to have to get better about leaving her with other people, but for some reason I feel so guilty every time I leave the house without her. Of course, I came home and both Daddy and Maddie were asleep in the bedroom - clearly they really don't need me as much as I think they do - haha! But it was good that she wasn't too hard on him that evening - he did her bathtime on his own and gave her a bottle before getting her down to sleep - doesn't sound like much, but a big improvement from just a week ago, when she would have cried almost the entire time.

Saturday morning Maddie and I were up early to go out shopping with Liz - we hit the Pickering Town Centre and some other shops - got a tonne of Xmas shopping done and may have even picked up a few things for myself (oops). Came home and played with Maddie upstairs while Seth was napping - we were doing tummy time and she rolled over for the very first time on her own (from tummy to back). She hasn't done it since - but I'm sure she will again - she's holding her head up so high now on her tummy, that's all she needed to get the momentum of getting over - it's a small thing, but I'm so proud of our growing little girl!

So, after Seth got up from his nap, we each got ready for the Christmas Party we were attending. It was in the city, and the weather forecast was calling for a big winter storm, but as it wasn't snowing when it was time to leave, we decided to chance it and head into the city. The roads started to get sloppy as we got into Toronto, but the snow really hadn't started falling all that much - all in all, we got lucky and were able to enjoy a few hours at the party before heading home. It was nice to see some friends we hadn't seen in a long while and I enjoyed a few glasses of vino (Seth insisted on driving - I'm not that selfish!) ... Once again Maddie was a superstar and totally behaved and acted chill all night. Here she is hanging out with Daddy at the party - her shirt says "Angel with an attitude" - and you gotta love the mini-Adidas shoes! PS - yes, that's Mommy's wine glass in the bottom left corner of the pic!

Since we got home kinda late last night, we had a bit of a family lie-in this morning - Maddie sharing the bed with us - I think we slept in until like 11am. She woke up in a super good mood (as she always is with Daddy on Sunday mornings) - giving out smiles and she even gave Seth a few giggles - another first for her. Two in one weekend! She hasn't really laughed for me yet, but that's okay that she shared that one with her Daddy. :)

And when we finally did get out of bed and look outside, we realized it was a total winter wonderland! The snow that started last night must have continued to fall - and it's still snowing fairly hard now - I think we have about 1-2 feet of snow out there. I just took a long leisurly bath, and came down downstairs to find Daddy and Maddie napping on the couch - here she is all curled up on him - love how she sticks out her bum when she sleeps!

Going to wait until she wakes up and then taking her outside in her snowsuit to get a pic of her with her first "snowfall".

Edited - we did get her all bundled up to take her outside for 1 minute to get some pics - it was blowing snow everywhere and Seth was worried that it was too cold for her so shooed us back inside while he shoveled the driveway - but here's the couple of pics that he took of me and my little bundled up boo before he made me take her back inside...

S&S

Xmas baking and shopping

The rest of last week went by in a bit of a blur. Wednesday we made a trip to Markville Mall to exchange Maddie's xmas dress at the Children's Place - they didn't have her size in the plaid one so we exchanged for an adorable little red dress w/ a white bow - she looks quite cute in it. We popped into Baby Gap and picked up white leotards with little red shoes painted on them - instead of wearing actual shoes. Doesn't sound that good - but honestly, I can't believe these weren't invented before.

Thursday we were back in the city - I had a doctor's appointment and then we met Rob for lunch. It was Maddie's first real restaurant meal - she was so well-behaved (as usual - honestly, she's so easy to take anywhere, I'm spoiled) - and we got all sorts of compliments from the older women at the tables next to us - how beautiful she was (of course!) and how she's so sweet (again, natch). Since we were at the Eaton Centre, we did a bit more xmas shopping there before we left - didn't get much except some cute stocking hangers from Pottery Barn - to go on our fireplace mantel.

Friday night our friends Greg and Liz came over for some socializing and drinks - didn't stay that late, but long enough to make some plans to head to the States in January to take advantage of the strong Cdn dollar and do some after xmas sale shopping at the outlets. Should be fun...

Saturday morning we were up super early to head into the city to meet my friend Tracy at the Umbra factory sale. The lineup was incredibly long - even at 9am - but luckily she had gotten there earlier and was saving us a place in line. She also gave us the CD of photos she had taken the weekend before - which were absolutely amazing. She was also sweet enough to bring Maddie a gift - the "Night Before Christmas" book - and told us how a friend of hers had a family tradition of reading that every Christmas Eve. It will be interesting to see what kind of traditions we start (and keep) now that Maddie's here...

So after buying a tonne of frames and photo albums (only $10 each!!!) at the sale, Seth and I drove Tracy home and headed back to Brooklin as my mom was scheduled to be there by 1pm. Once she arrived that afternoon we visited with her and then we all took a nap before getting ready to go out for dinner for Mom's birthday. We ended up going down to Jack Astor's - which was good food, but incredibly loud for us (god that statement makes me feel so old!). Here's a pic of Maddie in her cute H&M dress she wore for Gram's birthday dinner.

This week, Mom and I have done the Christmas baking - although even with two of us, it was still difficult to be productive with Maddie around. But we managed to make 4 types of cookies, 2 types of fudge, chocolates, turtles and 2 types of balls over the past four days - so I guess we did alright.

Today we went to the Pickering Town Centre to do some Christmas shopping and to get Maddie's picture taken with Santa. As always, she was a super-star while we were out and the pic w/ Santa is adorable.

This weekend we have a Christmas party to attend on Saturday night and hopefully will finish up our shopping on Sunday. That's the plan anyway...

S&S

Model behaviour

The end of last week was busy for us. On Thursday Auntie Liz came over to visit with us girls while Seth went out with Greg to watch the football game. We went to the nearby Thai place to pick up dinner, chatted for a bit while Maddie gave Auntie Liz all sorts of cuddles - to the point of falling asleep - until bathtime that is.

We spent Friday evening cleaning up and preparing for the weekend - my friend Tracy was coming over Saturday morning to take some pics of Maddie. The "photoshoot" went really well - no big surprise what everyone's Christmas gift is going to be this year! Here's a sample of some of the shots she took - they look so good, I'm really happy with the results. We're getting the full CD of all the shots next weekend, so I'll try to get them uploaded to Flickr soon.


Saturday night we were invited to Rob & Vone's for dinner - along with 2 other couples - it was a blast and was my first 'official' night out with drinks involved. I ended up having 5 beers (don't worry, Maddie had some bottles, I wasn't feeding her alc-milk) and definitely was paying for it the next morning. After 10 months of tee-tolling, that many drinks can really hit you hard - especially when you have 7 week old waking up every 2 hours in her cradle beside your bed.

But regardless of the hangover - it was a blast to be out and 'social' again. And Maddie was so well-behaved (again! always such a star when we go anywhere, I love it!) - she got all sorts of compliments.

Sunday morning came early though, with Grandma and Grandpa Vallier arriving at 10am for their visit. They were nice enough to bring the Christmas tree and decorations that my mom gave to us (she's downgrading her tree this year, so we get the big tree - saves us buying it - woo hoo!) ... so I spent the afternoon decorating the tree while Seth and his dad shovelled the driveway (lots of snow overnight) and put up the outside lights (and Grandma held Maddie - she liked her job!). I would say that we are officially ready for Christmas now - well, decorated for it already anyways. I can't believe that I haven't got any of my shopping done yet - it's not like me to leave it so late - that is my mission for this week, to get some of it done finally.

Today was Maddie's 8 week doctor's appointment, which included her first immunization shots. She weighed in at 10 lbs 1/2 oz (which seems down from last week's weight - but that was at a different doc's office on a manual scale - so I'm going to chalk that weight up to an anomaly - different scales probably are a bit different) - she also grew some more in length - she's now 58 centimeters long (almost 23 inches). That wasn't a shocker as she's grown out of so many sleepers already.

She took her shots like a champ - a little bit of crying, but calmed down pretty quickly as soon as they were over. We left the doctor's office to do a bit of shopping and she was great in Ikea, but when I got to the mall she started to get a little whiny. I thought maybe she was hungry, but she didn't want food - she just cried and cried and cried. I guess it was a delayed reaction to the shots - the doctor warned me she might be a bit grumpy for the rest of the day - she didn't say that she would be inconsolable for almost an hour. I finally got her chilled out a bit and hunted down Shoppers Drug Mart to get some baby Motrin - that seemed to do the trick, she's still a bit whiny, but definitely not in pain anymore. Poor thing.

So the plan for the rest of the week is to get some Christmas shopping done, get her picture with Santa (after finding a Christmas dress - Grandma Vallier got her one, but it's too big and so we just have to hunt down the right size to make an exchange before we go see Santa). This weekend Grandma Thompson is coming to visit for a few days so we can get our Christmas baking done - that's pretty much the plan for the coming weekend and next week...

I'll leave you with a pic of Maddie with Grandma Vallier in front of our Christmas tree...

S&S

Her first cold

Last week was a super busy one for us - Monday saw Maddie and I attending a 'mommy and me' class - hosted by the same teacher that taught our prenatal classes - it was interesting and we learned a few things, and it was definitely cool being around a bunch of new moms, but since it was in the city, the drive was a bit much for us. And while it would have been nice to make some new friends, they all lived in the city and I was the only one in the 'burbs, so I don't think I would have ended up seeing much of them. It did motivate me to try and find some similar classes/groups up here in the Durham region (well, motivate me to be interested in finding some, not that I've actually done anything about it yet!).

Wednesday was another day in the city - we had a few doctors appointments - one in the morning with Maddie's doctor to check her for thrush (yup, she has it - and is now on a 10-day treatment of niacin - antibiotics). At noon we headed to the Suzy office to introduce Maddie to my colleagues - everyone thought she was gorgeous (of course!) and sooo well-behaved (she makes such a good first impression!). We then headed down to Mt Sinai for my doctor's appt - the doc was running behind schedule, so we had to wait for almost an hour, just to pretty much be told, okay - glad you're feeling well - nice knowin' ya. After a big long feed, we were back on the road, just in time to hit full rush-hour traffic - it took us 2 hours to get home - nightmare.

Seth got off work early on Friday and we headed out to do some grocery shopping and other errands - we were home by 7pm and in bed just a few hours later - as we had an early morning planned - had to tidy up for Mom and Walt as they were visiting for the day on Saturday. We had a good visit and Maddie was well-behaved (as usual sleeping through most of it!) - and Grandpa Walt helped us by cutting a hole in our door for our cats to get into the basement - so the door doesn't have to be propped open anymore! Too bad we couldn't find a cat door that would allow fat Simon to jump through - so for now that hole is just open - we'll eventually figure out some kind of door for it.

On Sunday Maddie and I went shopping with Auntie Liz for xmas decorations for the front of the house - we got lucky at Cdn Tire as they were having a huge sale and we got all sorts of lights, garland etc. I wrapped the garland around our front porch and attached mini-lights. Seth then went out to put up the lights on the eavestrough - but because they were backed up (and that water had subsequently frozen), he couldn't get the clips attached, so we still need to get those lights up - hopefully this weekend.

This week has been a lazy one so far. Poor Maddie came down with her first cold on Monday - she's really stuffed up and sneezing/coughing all over the place. Her one eye was tearing up on Monday a lot and when we got up on Tuesday it has crusted shut (ewww!) - so we headed to the walk-in clinic that night and the dr prescribed her antibiotic drops to circumvent any infection. So the poor thing is on 2 medications now and has a cold to boot - and I have to say she's handling it like a champion. And sleeping a lot more - which I'm not sure is due to the cold or just her becoming a class A sleeper - hopefully the latter and hopefully it lasts!

She is officially 7 weeks (this past Tuesday) and has grown so much I can't believe it. She started giving full smiles (not random ones - actually giving them out when you ask for them now!) on Sunday, and I swear she laughed today during her conversation with the bears that hang above her swing. She loves talking to her mobiles - she really gives them hell sometimes - and it's funny to hear her gurgling away as I do things in the kitchen - too cute.

We also had to put a bunch more sleepers into the 'doesn't fit anymore bin' this week - I'm not sure how much she's grown - but I swear at least another inch. She was 10 lbs 7 oz as of last Monday (Nov 19th) and I wouldn't be surprised if she's up to at least 11 lbs this week. She definitely has lost that lean look she had for the first few weeks of life though - while she's still tiny, she definitely is chunking up with baby fat nicely. Her little thighs are like tiny little sausages you just want to eat up!

Not only is she growing and learning things at an astonishing rate (she found her hand this week - so she sucks on her fist whenever she's tired - not just a thumb will satisfy her, has to be the whole fist!) ... but she's also developing the cutest personality. She is definitely a morning person - giving out all sorts of coos and smiles during her morning diaper change and being a generally happy cuddly baby. Although she does get super happy every time her diaper is changed - or maybe she just likes to be naked - can't decide which. And when she's tired, she rubs her eyes and yawns like a little person - and then gets super cuddly - really, she'll cry just to be picked up and cuddled in before she goes to sleep.

She's currently working on learning how to roll over - she tries pretty much every time we do a Tummy Time session, lifting her leg and swinging it backward, but she's hasn't worked up enough momentum yet - but I'm sure it will happen soon.

I have to say (and hopefully am not jinxing us) - but we got really lucky in the baby department - her temperment is really happy and easy-going (clearly takes after her daddy, not me!). And of course she gets more gorgeous every day - her eyes are definitely going to be brown - but the verdict is still out on the hair - she is losing more and more every day - let's hope she doesn't turn into a total baldy.

This weekend is going to be busy - we have a baby/family photoshoot with an old friend on Saturday afternoon, and Saturday evening we're going out to a friend's house for dinner. That will be fun as Seth is DD'ing and I get to have a few drinks for the first time in almost a year - don't worry, Maddie will be drinking a few bottles that night of breastmilk that I've stocked up - we don't need to introduce her to the sauce just yet. Sunday we have Grandma and Grandpa Vallier coming to visit for the day - so it's a full weekend for us - let's hope Maddie's good nature keeps up!

S&S