Apparently my blogging skills have been on hiatus since i've been so caught up in, LIFE. Life has been a blur the last few weeks. New skills have been learned, new families have been joined, names have been changed, fears have been...well, attempted to conquer at least!
One cool thing about Des Moines is that there is a theme park not too far from our house: Adventureland. Complete with rollercoasters, high flying-heart pounding rides that cause your inner child to scream in hysterics...(yeah, that didn't happen this time, but someday soon it will!) We decided to go there as a family a few weekends ago, and introduce Aubrie to the world of thrill rides! She didn’t bite the bait. The girl fought me as I tried to buckle her onto the carousal horse—the first ride of the day! She eventually dug it and was actually smiling and saying “whee” by about the 4th or 5th rotation. But the 2nd ride had her screaming in hysterics. Why did I think a toddler who struggles on the carousal is going to enjoy being dropped hydraulic-style 5 foot increments in the air?? Silly mommy. Maybe the ride was more for my enjoyment ;). The waterpark was supposed to be the “cherry on top”, but Aubrie proved to be a little girly girl when the water splashed her face. After about 40 minutes of daddy and I acting like complete fools, jumping around like toddlers to get her to laugh, and shoving our faces into streaming jets of water to show her “Hey, it’s fun”….she finally was ok with running around. She absolutely LOVED the pool though! It ended up being a pretty successful trip, but I think it goes without saying that we’ll probably wait until next summer to try again :)
Our 1st big milestone of the month is that Aubrie started climbing out of her crib. What?!?! It actually happened the night we went to Adventureland—she woke at 245 am screaming like someone was ripping her limbs off—I went in and over the course of a few hours (yes, HOURS) I tried everything: diaper, water, snuggles, I even changed her pj’s! Finally at 4:15 am I decided that I’d had enough and maybe she should cry herself to sleep, aka the Ferber method. About 20 minutes into that the crying suddenly got louder, and I rushed to open our bedroom door to find Aubrie in the hallway…. Guilty panic ensued and I scooped her up and squeezed every bit of love and “sorries” that I could, as we both sat on her bedroom floor crying (me because I wondered if she felt so abandoned by me that she had to riskily jump the side of her crib, her probably because I was crying and she didn’t know what was going on!). I decided enough was enough and she deserved to snuggle as long as it took. It only took about 10 minutes for her to fall asleep, and I finally laid her down and crawled back into my own bed with about 15 mins to catnap before getting ready for work :(
The next night she climbed out again, and I decided to camp out on her floor with her, laying down a bunch of blankets to make a cushy mattress for us both. She slept all night, I tossed and turned from bruised hip to bruised hip, glancing up at the clock every hour or two to see how much time I had to sleep before getting up for work. The third night I took her crib mattress and laid it on the floor, rubbed her back and walked out of the room….she opened the bedroom door herself so I decided it was time to break down and put up her toddler bed, and buy a baby gate to at least contain her wandering to her room. Thursday afternoon I set the toddler bed up and she had a GREAT time climbing into and out of it! Since that night she’s slept fairly well, usually only crying/whimpering for a few minutes before climbing back into her bed and crashing for the night. Success (so far)!
I’m going to skip the next part of the story simply because it deserves it’s own post. Which it will get, tomorrow. The post will involve a beautiful white dress and a lovestruck man.
Our next big milestone: Aubrie pottied on her potty chair, for the first time EVER! Absolutely no prompting from me—swear! She just sat down on it and said “mommy pa-ee”. To my utter surprise she actually went!!! I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket for this one though, leaning more towards it was a once in a lifetime act on her part. Well, hopefully not once in a lifetime or that’s a lot of diapers! I’m just not convinced that she’s ready for pottytraining. Of course, if she is, I’ll go with it! We can always store the diapers we’ve purchased ahead of time for a future child, whenever that may be!
These two adorable little “hollywood divas” are Aubrie and Cameron: BFF. (or so her mom and I like to think!) Cami is inside girly girl to Aubrie’s outdoor tomboy attitude. Yet Cami is a fish, enjoying the splash park and the water in the face while Aubrie runs to the fence to get as far away from it as she can. Cami’s got the cute straight-and spiky-haired pigtails, while Aubrie’s got the short hair with the curls in the back. They start out super shy with each other and eventually warm up enough to eat their snacks next to each other. I honestly don’t know that they’ve ever uttered more than a few “words” to each other! But they’re incredibly adorable and only 3 weeks apart, and her mom and I grew up less than 30 minutes from each other… so why not force a best-friendship on them?
I’m realizing over the last few weeks that my baby girl is no longer a baby. She speaks in half sentences, most of it comprehendable to me, and is becoming more independent by the day! Can walk down stairs on her own, holding onto the railing. She can drink out of a big girl cup without spilling (75% of the time at least). She can climb onto the playground and go down the big girl slide on her own. She can jump. She can feed herself with a fork and spoon (yet still chooses not to sometimes). She can point out and name most people in her extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc). She is becoming quite bossy with Gizzy, telling him to “Dizzy, ki-et.” whenever he barks. She likes to climb up into the highchair herself, and actually can “guckle” herself in (she can say B, but replaces it with a G in words). She likes to walk Gizzy, for a few feet before dropping his leash. She feeds her interactive baby, then when the baby cries she puts her to her shoulder and pats her back saying “shhhh”. Ahh….she’s growing up so fast! I see her getting taller and the baby fat fading from her legs, and I get sad…but at the same time excited for all the new milestones to come! Sometimes I wish I had a slow motion button on life.
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