The Chair

The Chair has become the bane of my existence. It's the gold swivel rocker in Brittany's room where I spend at least two hours a day rocking her to sleep -- late morning nap, afternoon nap, and bedtime. I get numb from having 25 pounds of baby stretched across my lap for so long.

It's been getting harder and harder to get her to sleep at night. Sometimes when I've rocked her to sleep, she'll pop awake as soon as I stand up from The Chair to put her in her crib, and then I'm back to square one. Some nights it takes an hour and a half -- I'm not kidding.

Anyway, I've been thinking about eliminating one of her daytime naps so that she'll go to sleep earlier at night, say 9:30 instead of 11:00. It would be wonderful to have that extra free time.

So I started yesterday by skipping her afternoon nap, but it didn't work because she climbed up on my lap at 7:00 and fell asleep. I only let her sleep about 15 minutes and made her wake up, but still had a hard time getting her to sleep last night.

Today I skipped her late morning nap and let her decide when to climb up on my lap and fall asleep, which she did at 3:00. Then I went and put her in her crib, but she only slept for an hour so I thought I'd have it easy tonight. I was wrong.

I made Mikey feel sorry for me so he rocked Brittany to sleep tonight. I was so happy -- a whole day with NO time spent in The Chair. Woo-hoo! Grandpa rocks! Then we went out to the garage for a celebratory smoke but our delight was cut short by the friggin' baby monitor.

(***sigh***)

So, I rocked Brittany to sleep again, and when I stood up to put her in her crib she woke up again, so I rocked her to sleep again, and I am damned tired of rocking.

Anyway, there is good news: Brittany's brushing her teeth now! Or rather, I am and she's letting me! To know how truly amazing this is, you have to understand that this child won't hardly let me stick a finger in her mouth to check for new teeth (only four so far), so I wondered how on earth I was gonna manage it.

She loves to copy whatever we do, though, so when she takes her bath I leave her in her safety seat to watch me while I go brush my teeth at the sink, and then I brush hers and she loves it! I'm not sure if it's because it makes her think she's a big girl like Grammy or because she likes the taste of her Strawberry Shortcake toothpaste but, as long as it gets the job done, who cares?

Tiny dancer

Brittany practices her dance moves all day every day, and has added a number a steps to her repertoire. There's the Brittany Quick-Step, which is basically running in place; the Bounce, where she bends both knees to bob her booty up and down; the Rock, where she shifts her weight from foot to foot; the Hippy Hippy Shake, where she bends one knee to shake her booty from side to side; and the Turnaround, which is not quite a spin, but walking around in a circle.

Along with this fancy footwork, she'll slap her knees, belly or chest with her hands, clap, throw her arms up in the air, or try to snap her fingers, but she hasn't really got the hang of that yet.

The music she most often dances to is on our cable music channels. She makes us circle through Bluegrass, Classic Rock, Party Favorites, '80s, '70s, Solid Gold Oldies and Big Band & Swing until we find something with the right beat.

She's been playing music with Grandpa, too. He'll let her strum his guitar until she drops the pick into the sound hole (because she likes to watch Grandpa shaking his guitar over his head to make the pick fall out), or else she'll take off running with the pick, giggling gleefully because she knows one of us will chase after her and she does love to play Chase.

Can't hardly get bored with Sis in the house, I tell you what.

Cutest clown in town

Brittany in her Halloween costume:





She's been saying "Shazbot!" a lot lately, which helped me to finally figure out what language she's speaking -- it's Orkan!

We're down to just one binky now. I've been hunting all week and can't find any trace of the other three, which is incredibly maddening. They have to be here somewhere, dammit!

Binky hunting

is one of my regular daily activities now. We have four in circulation -- pink, purple, blue and green -- but it's rare to turn up all four at the same time. First, there's the walk-around visual search, then the hands-and-knees looking under the furniture search and, if neither of those turns up a binky, I have to start looking inside anything that has a binky-sized opening. Sissy's pretty sneaky sometimes.

We were down to two binkies for a couple of weeks, until I found the green one in the back corner of the patio and the blue one under the ottoman that blocks the electrical outlet next to the aquarium. Now I haven't seen the pink one in a few days.

The reason I have an ottoman blocking the electrical outlet next to the aquarium is because Sis likes to pop out those little plastic things you put in the plug openings to keep babies' fingers out. Yep, she just pops them right out. Repeatedly. So I've had to arrange chairs, mirrors and whatnot in front of them to keep her little fingers out of danger. Plays hell with my decorating scheme but, oh, well.

Lately I've noticed that Brittany will cock her binky over to the corner of her mouth so she can chat and chew at the same time. It's hard to carry on a conversation with her, though, because she doesn't speak English. I tried to write down some of her chatterings, but a lot of her words seem to be all consonants and defy any attempt at transcription. Anyway, it goes something like this:

Shekh! Thulom deegumm tcheegah. Ah didi dah, haw put tleekow. Shedecomow dugawah digum. Wah duk op shuk bubu da. Shigilum bugulayah gigum. Bwoogah ummegom dibidah. Awayah!

And she sings, too:

Dah! da-da-da, Dah! da-da-da
Dah! da-da-da, Dah! da-da-da

And on and on...

She's pretty good at getting around now. She learned how to stand up without pulling up on something and she started running around the backyard for the first time this week. She has a little toy lawnmower out there that talks and makes lawnmower motor noise but she likes to dance to the motor noise instead of pushing it around the yard.

She was playing in the Toy Room (used to be the dining room) the other day when I heard her making distress noises. Not quite crying, but it sounded weird so I looked around and saw that she had high-centered herself on the side of her little doll-sized playpen. Head and arms inside, feet flailing outside.

Ain't never a dull moment with Little Sis around.

I killed Bob's fish

Woops!

It was a betta that he left here when he left. All I did was change the water; it was dead the next morning.

Well, I don't guess he was all that attached to it, since he didn't take it with him. I hope not, anyway.

Tooth #3

just broke the surface of Brittany's gums. This one's on top; the other two are on the bottom.

We took her to the zoo Sunday and had a lot of fun. She's such a good baby -- she never cried or whined or anything while we were there. Plus she took a nap as soon as we got home so Gampaw and Grammy could rest up a little after three hours of hiking.

She can show me where her ears are and sometimes her eyes, but we're still working on where her nose and mouth are.

Her walking is getting better, but she still staggers like a two-foot tall drunk most of the time.

Have I mentioned her dancing? She's been dancing for months now, to commercial jingles and TV show theme songs, Gampaw's Zeppelin and Creedence DVDs, and various musical toys that she plays constantly. She'll bend one knee to rock her hips and pats her leg or claps her hands in time to the music and it's just awful darn cute.

Still amazed at the sight

of this itty-bitty little girl toddling around the house:



I took better pictures of her walking today, but the stupid disk kept going into error mode when I tried to upload them, and they're gone. This is the only one I was able to salvage.

Grrrrr...I hate my camera! I need a new one, desperately.

Baby steps

Brittany is walking! Not very steady at it yet, but she's doing 8 or 9 steps at a time today. It was 5 or 6 steps yesterday, and 3 or 4 the day before.

Her daddy was here to see it; he came in from Kansas Friday night with his new girlfriend in tow. Which would've been fine, I guess, except that he never bothered to mention her to me until they walked through my front door together.

Anyway, we were finally able to celebrate Bob's 26th birthday and Bridgie's 24th birthday yesterday. I now have a combined total of 50 years of motherhood under my belt, which is weird to think about since I'm only 43!

Took Sissy to the fair last night

Should've known better, but it's been a looooooong time since I went to the fair. Forgot about trying to find a place to park, and the crowds, and the lines.

We went and checked out Kiddieland, but decided Brittany's not quite ready for any rides yet. Maybe next year.

Gampaw bought her some cotton candy, but she cringed and batted it away like we'd tried to hand her a live rattlesnake. She never would even taste it. The kid has good instincts! Well, truth be told, if we had handed her a live rattlesnake, she probably would've thought it was some cool new toy, but you know what I mean.

So we went and looked at the animals. Saw lots of horses and cows and goats. Lots and lots of goats -- three barns full. Pretty little Boer goats, but I never knew there were that many goats in the state. Brittany oohed and aahed over all the animals, especially the horsies, but she really went nuts when we found a donkey. She grabbed hold of the side of the pen and jabbered like crazy at it. Had to peel her little hands off so we could finally move on.

Might take her to the zoo next weekend. Or maybe not, since that's the family reunion and Bob's supposed to come down to visit, if he can afford to. Maybe the weekend after.

My little one-toothed wonder

finally sprouted her second tooth! Right next to the first one, on the bottom. No sign of any others yet.

Okay, so my nekkid ladies

aren't actually Naked Ladies, as it turns out. They're Spider Lilies and they look like this, except mine are more of a salmon color. I tried to take a good picture of them today, but you know my crappy camera...

Anyway, they're in full bloom right now and pretty spectacular, so hurry on by in the next day or two if you want to see them at their peak.

Happy birthday, Bridgie!

Mommy loves you!

Brittany at twelve months

Took Little Sis to the doctor Friday for a checkup. She weighs 21 pounds, 10 ounces and is 27 1/4 inches tall. Still in the 10th percentile heightwise, meaning 90% of one-year-olds are taller than she is. Finally got caught up on her immunizations, her hemocrit was fine, and Doc says it's time to wean her off formula and baby food.

We've been letting her feed herself bits and pieces of our dinner this week, and now she won't hardly eat baby food anymore. She loves cheese. And birthday cake and ice cream:



(Hey, Bridgie -- e-mail me the birthday pictures, would ya? And remember to shrink them first.)

It's almost time for her first haircut. I'm not really ready for that yet, but her little forelock is starting to get in her eyes, so I'll have to do something about it soon. Tried a couple of different kinds of barrettes, but they don't stay in very long. Tried to do a little ponytail, too, but she squirms so much I can't get it fastened without hurting her.

She can stand alone, but doesn't think she can. She's steady on her feet holding on to nothing but my hair, so we're working on that.

She chatters incessantly in her own little language that none of us can understand; Mikey says she must be Pentecostal, because she's already speaking in tongues.

She's gone horse-crazy already -- she's in love with her big furry rocking horse. She's not interested in riding it, though. She just pets it and lays her head on it and loves on it all day long, which is almost unbearably cute.

Happy Birthday, Sherri!

One year closer to the Big 4-0!

Nekkid ladies

Hey, Sher! Remember that clump of stuff you brought me from Nina's a couple of years ago that never did anything?

Well, it's doing it now. I counted ten blooms sprouting this morning.

Celebrating Sissy

Y'all missed a heckuva party.

Bob came in from Wichita, and Bridget, Sherri and Mikey's whole family were here.

The pictures I took on my crappy digital camera didn't come out so good but, happily, everybody else brought cameras, plus I had my videocam going, so the whole thing was recorded for posterity.

Brittany was the cutest little one-year-old princess in town, and actually wore her tiara for about 30 seconds at a time before yanking it off. She fed herself some cake and ice cream, and wore the rest. We discussed taking her out in the yard to hose her off, but Sherri wound up giving her a bath. Then she put on her new jammies and now she's sleeping like a baby.

Which is what I should be doing, while I have the chance.

Ordered Brittany's b-day cake

It's a princess castle. And it comes with a little tiara for her to wear.

Still have housecleaning and shopping to do, but right now I need to take a nap. Haven't had an uninterrupted night of sleep in ages.

(**yawn**)

Bob's gone

Moved himself to Wichita yesterday to get away from Sarah and to get a fresh start. He says the career opportunities are much better and it's cheaper to live there than here.

I have legal guardianship of Brittany, so she's staying here with me. If he eventually manages to get the guardianship lifted, it'll tear my heart out if he takes her up there. A hundred and fifty some-odd miles away from me.

I'm trying not to think about that.

Doug died last week

Kyra's daddy (Lesley's husband) passed away in Washington on the 15th. Sherri had just heard about it, so I don't know if anyone else knows yet.

A terrible thing, to go so young. I couldn't remember what his disease was, so I looked it up on Sherri's blog -- read about it here.

Brittany was invited

to Cousin Gracie's birthday party, where she tasted cake for the first time.



She'll be eating her own birthday cake in just a few more weeks. And ice cream, too -- she loves ice cream. No idea what kind of party we'll have -- I haven't managed to plan a thing yet.