Tuesday, June 30, 2009

10 months old and Baptised

Christina turned 10 months old yesterday and the day before that she was Baptised.

We didn't have a huge celebration or anything, but it was still very special. I don't have very many pictures from the church, but I do have several pictures from that day. Hopefully I'll get the pictures that were taken at the church from some other people.

I also have a video of the actual Baptism (Thanks Rachel!). I will put a shortened version on Christina's dedicated webpage. If you have not been invited to that page yet, please comment here or email me so that I can add you. I started it a month or so ago but haven't had the chance to add everyone to the guest list.








































Thursday, June 25, 2009

My little social butterfly

I always knew that Christina liked the other babies at daycare, but today I realized that she is a social butterfly. Thank goodness she takes that quality from her Dad because I definitely don't want her to get my inept social skills.

At daycare today, I took Christina into the room where I usually nurse her. That room also happens to be the room with all of the cribs. There were a couple of sleeping babies and a couple that were awake. As we walked over to the rocking chair, Christina immediately got excited when she saw her friends.

Normally she can't take her eyes off of them, which makes it very difficult to nurse, but today was a little different. Christina and another baby were having a great time chatting away, laughing and smiling at each other. They were even reaching out to each other (Christina from my arms and the other baby from her crib). It was honestly very cute, although I never was able to settle CC down enough to nurse her. Eventually, I stood Christina up next to the crib of the other baby. Christina held on and continued social hour with this other baby through the bars.

My little girl really does love interacting with all of the babies. Seeing how happy she is to play with them, "talk" to them, and look at them, really makes me happy that she is going to Daycare. I know that it would be wonderful for me to spend everyday with her, but at least I know that she is growing as a person because of Daycare. Who wants to stay home with boring Mommy when they can go have fun, right?

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

My Baby is a Genius

Since Christina started daycare five months ago, there has only been one day that I was unable to see her on my lunch break. That one day she had a really bad day. Needless to say, I did not intend on doing that again. Plus, I just can't imagine not seeing her during the day when she is only a mile away.

Today though, I didn't have a choice. I had an all day training and we only had thirty minutes for lunch. Since Christina was sleeping at the time (I called the Daycare to check on her), I was out of luck.

When I went to get her at the end of the day, I was more than a little anxious to see her. The huge smile on her face told me she felt the same (aaww). I was relieved to find out she had a very good day.

As we were leaving, one of the teachers said "Bye Bye Christina" and without hesitation, Christina looked at her teacher and started waving goodbye with her entire arm (not just her hand, hehe). She didn't need any encouragement or anything, she just start waving and smiling goodbye with such excitement. It was as if she had been doing that for weeks now. She knew exactly what she was doing and why.

I've seen her wave a couple of times before, but nothing like this. On the way home I was thinking, "Wow, what a wonderful, beautiful, amazing, smart, adorable little girl I have".

When I got home, I put Christina on the floor so that she could crawl around and play (all that she wants to do these days) while I sat on the couch. After a couple of minutes, she crawled over to me, gently patted Amstels head twice (didn't pull his hair or anything!), grabbed a hold of my jeans, looked up at me and GET THIS she said, yes SAID "up, up". She then proceeded to pull herself to a complete standing position using my jeans with one of her hands and a nearby table with the other.

If you didn't know, Christina has never done these things before. So those few minutes were nothing short of A-MAZ-ING. OH, and did I tell you that after she pulled herself up I started yelling "Yay!" and clapping my hands like crazy. More importantly though, she then gave me the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. With a smile stretched from ear to ear, she knew her Mama was proud!

So yeah, all of a sudden my child can wave when it is time to say goodbye (without being prompted to), pat the doggie without hurting him or causing him to run away in pain, say "up, up" apparently (although I still kind of feel like I was imagining that part, lol), and pull herself up to a standing position on her own. So yeah,
GENIUS, :-)

Monday, June 15, 2009

Lots of Firsts

Yesterday was a big day for Christina. We originally wanted to take her to the boardwalk and the beach since the weather was suppose to be sunny and in the 80's. When it turned out that the weather was cloudy and cool, we weren't sure if we should still go, but we did and it actually turned out to be a nice day (even if it was kind of cold).

The first thing we did at the boardwalk was take Christina for her first carousel ride. She wasn't exactly over the moon about it, but I think she had a good time. It was just so new and different for her. Christina pretty much just hung out in my arms while we went around. I waved at Aunt Rachel as she took pictures of us and Christina tried to lean over and chew the side of the seats. She was also pretty distracted by everything going on around her like the kids running around, the loud noises, and the train going by.





After the ride was over, I hopped on a horse with her just for a photo op. We couldn't ride on the horse since they didn't have any stationary one's, but we didn't want to pass on the picture. I think Christina enjoyed the horse more than the ride.


After the carousel ride, we walked on the boardwalk for awhile and played some games.

All of the prizes won went straight to CC of course. She even got a PINK GUITAR! How cool is that? It's not even a toy guitar, it is an actual real guitar. But, it is small, for a child, and it's pink!

We ate at the Tiki Bar and saw a live band too. Christina seemed to enjoy all of the music and dancing around. Her grandma had a great time showing her off to the crowd. Oh, and her Daddy gave her lots of lemon's to suck on during lunch. She loves those things!


We also took her down to the beach, but that didn't go over too well. At that point she was very tired and I think that probably made this new experience harder to handle. She cried when we tried to put her feet in the sand and she cried when we got close to the ocean. Luckily it was only one of those cries like "get me the hell away from this sand/ocean" and she stopped as soon as we followed her wishes.

Here is Grandma trying to convince her that sand is fun . . .


Christina is not buying it . . .

And when we tried to put her feet in the sand, this is what we got . . .



Overall though, I think CC had a really great day. She passed out when we got home and slept very well last night too. I have a lot of videos from yesterday too. I'm going to try to sort through them and post some of them here. Stay tuned :-)

Oh, and I almost forgot that there was a first for me and Nik yesterday too. Last night we got to go to the movies for the first time since Christina was born! Grandma and Granddad babysat, which really only involved being in the house while she slept because my sleepy girl never even woke up while we were gone. It was awesome that things worked out. I mean, it is about time, Christina is nine and a half months old afterall. Now if I can just find a regular babysitter that lives near by so that we might be able to do dinner and a movie one night . . .

Saturday, June 13, 2009

I guess she is just creative

If you have kids and breastfed, did your baby ever make up his or her own nursing positions?

No matter how much I google, I still only see the standard nursing positions: cradle, cross cradle, football hold, and side lying. And yet, someone must have forgotten to tell Christina this because she seems to have made up her own positions.

My little wild child is too antsy and anxious to stick to the very mellow nursing positions that are standard. When I try to nurse her in the cradle position, she is always trying to sit up, turn around, and look to see what she could possibly be missing out on elsewhere. To remedy this (or at least to help a little), she has decided to nurse sitting up.

So, her new nursing position is to sit up in my lap, facing me. She will then bend over slightly so that she can nurse. This gives her the opportunity to stop at any second and look around the room. It isn't the most comfortable position for either of us and it certainly is not a relaxing position, but this is what she wants.

She has also put a spin on the side lying position. Now this one is really amusing! Not only will she nurse laying down on her back, her side or even her stomach but in addition, she sometimes likes to nurse while she is on all fours! She'll get up like she is going to crawl away, and then dive bomb into my breast. It is very weird, lol.

This little girl is so active, I doubt she'll want to continue nursing much longer. She acts like I'm trying to rope her in and strap her down. She wants to be free to roam around and look at whatever she wants.

So tell me I'm not the only one. Has anyone else had a child that made up his or her own nursing positions? It is too funny that she does this and so very weird at the same time, lol.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Dilbert

I work for a consulting firm and that means that hours are flexible. The whole environment of the office is completely different from anywhere else you will ever work. Everyone is laid back and happy, as long as our clients are happy that is.

I'm extrememly lucky to work here. I can come in late or leave early, I can work from home. I can feel relaxed at work and rarely does work get me stressed out. As long as I can get my work done and make the client happy, then life is good.

Working for a consulting firm also means billable hours. It takes some time to get use to working like this, but well worth the training curve.

Every week at our project status meeting, we have an agenda with a Dilbert cartoon at the top. This one I just had to share.