We seem to have settled into a schedule that makes mealtime more enjoyable, both at the table/high chair, and nursing. Pretty much, she eats/nurses every two hours. So up around 7am, and she nurses, then around 9am she has breakfast. Then she normally takes a nap for about an hour around 10am. She nurses again at 11am, lunch at 1pm, nap around 2pm for an hour. Nurses at 3pm, dinner at 5pm, bathtime at 6:30pm, nurses and bed at 7pm. She still doesn't sleep through the night, but there have been a few nights in the past week when she slept solid for 6-7hrs without waking up.
She is working on her upper molars, so she has been a little crabby. Mostly she chews on her fingers (whole fist in the mouth style), and still every toy goes immediately into her mouth. I don't anticipate that her molar will erupt through the gum for another month or more, but I could be wrong!
A few weekends ago, Juliana showed us a glimpse of toddler tantrums... Prior to this new development, if she was getting into something she shouldn't, we could just pick her up, turn her around, and she'd take off after something new. Or she would keep walking back to whatever it was until we got a new toy/thing to distract her. However, that weekend, we took away whatever it was and she threw her hands down, and started wailing... I think Brian and I both just sort of stared at her, stuck where we were standing. It was emotionally exhausting, and at the time, seemingly unpredictable. We quickly adapted though =) Now, my tactic is to realize that she's trying to learn about her surroundings and things. We do our best to make it harder for her to get into things she's not supposed to (keeping the trash lid closed for example), but also I try talking to her to teach her how to do things, what that thing is for, or telling her the "rules." For example: Reaching into the dishwasher to grab a utensil: no touch, sharp. (aka don't grab the fork or knife). Playing with the medicine syringe while getting ready for bath time: Let's leave that here, we can play with it after our bath. No, this approach doesn't always work, but it makes ME feel better, so by extension, I feel like she's responding better. Here's a pictorial example: She was tasting some of Daddy's chocolate pudding, and it was close to naptime, but she took the spoon from Daddy, walked into the living room, and zerberted the spoon getting chocolate pudding all over her face. So Daddy took the spoon away. And clearly, she was happy about that!
About the time she started pushing her boundaries in this manner, she also started fighting me to get into her car seat. I believe that now after a week of me being matter of fact, and also giving her a very quick "if...then..." statement (the sooner you sit down, the sooner I can hold you, or we can go home), she has finally gotten much better about the smooth transition. But here's a picture from one morning last week after a huge struggle to get her to sit down and buckled up to head to day care. Notice the puppy dog ears on her hat standing straight up against the upper side of the seat, and now you can imagine the "path" she took to sit down, or the arching and standing position she took initially to fight sitting down!
Normally, I get home with Juliana around 6:00-6:15pm. So we have about 15 minutes to unpack her bottles, food containers, and my pumped milk from the day before we go to the bath and bed routine. Brian is immensely helpful in the process, so normally we set up the gates on the stairs, and we go about cleaning and unpacking, and Juliana toddles around the kitchen. One day, she reached into my open backpack (I keep my cooler with the milk I pump inside, so I had unzipped it to get the milk out), and she pulled out the apple that I hadn't eaten that day. You can see what happened:
Mostly she dropped the apple all around the kitchen, so it was pretty smooshed when we finally headed upstairs. And I don't think she was a big fan of the skin of the apple (which is mostly what she got anyway), but she ate a few bites!
On another evening, I quickly ran upstairs to the bathroom, and when I came back downstairs, Juliana was sitting on the floor doing this:
She had reached into the open trash can (hence why we try to remember to keep the lid down now...), grabbed the empty Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream container, was licking the lid, and sticky, melted ice cream was dotted all over the floor. Just imagine how upset she was when we took the container away, tried to wipe up the spilled ice cream, and then she tried to stand up and grab the container back, so she got ice cream on the bottom of her boots, and then she slipped, etc. We were just trying not to laugh!
One of her new things is to "scribble." For example, here she has taken her toy wrench, and is using it to "draw" on the floor, knock containers or bottles, etc. She takes her "utensils" at meal time, and will shuffle around Cheerios. For the last few mornings, when she wakes up I can hear her "drag" her passey across the slats in her crib and then drop it through the slats to the floor. She's done this for 3 mornings now, and I'm keeping track to see when she'll stop because it means she's "lost" passey and won't get it back until Mom or Dad come in to pick it up, clean it off, and give it back to her.
I read something that said that the sooner babies practiced eating with utensils, the better they would be at it. Even though it would be a messy process... As a "baby step" to this process, I got bowls with suction cup bases. So for breakfast, I put some cherrios in her bowl. She was quite excited by this, but then became extremely distracted and interested in how to pick the bowl up. As you can see, she acted like she wanted to "drink" out of the bowl, but couldn't get it off the tray. Eventually this frustrated her so much, that I had to take the bowl away and declare "All done!"
One thing about spacing out her mealtimes, it has made nursing so much more enjoyable. In the past, she'd nurse for all of 30 seconds and then want to run off and play. Now, she'll linger for 5+mins! And she's not nipping, she's not playing, she's snuggling up to me, and sometimes she'll talk to me, as if to say, "Thanks mom!" It also means she's in much happier moods and wants to sit on the bed with me afterward for a little bit and "chat" or "play."
Last Wednesday was a rough day for me. I was very stressed out, a lot was going on, and I felt "blue" all day. When I was putting her down for bed, we had finished nursing and I was letting her crawl around for a little bit before getting the passey and her blanket to signal "nite nite." She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face into my neck. Now, normally, this little busy girl would do this and after 30 seconds be done, but I hugged her back and she stayed this way for a few minutes. And then she put her forehead on my forehead and was doing her hum thing while giving me kisses (open mouthed) on my cheek. Then she moved back in for a hug. I was thinking about how this was exactly what I needed, and then I started thinking about how if you hug my mom like that, with your face into her neck when you're breathing, she gets really ticklish, and just as I was having this thought, Juliana started giggling and I started giggling because we were doing the same thing to each other! And I knew, although Mom wasn't physically there with me, she was with me... And the world has seemed more manageable and brighter ever since.
So, we are still plugging away! I am VERY busy for the next few weeks at school, lots of things on my "list" with impending deadlines. It's hard to believe that February is almost over because of these deadlines! Everything else seems to still be on track for defending before the end of the year (aka I'm starting to realize that my advisor wasn't kidding after all!). At home, Brian is working hard at work, and then coming home and working on things to finish off some housing projects! I only wish I could say I have the same work ethic! Our "goal" is to have the upper basement finished by Juliana's birthday (April 13th), and we're making strides to accomplish that goal! And you know how things are with Juliana =) She's visiting the "Young Toddlers" room at day care almost everyday, and I believe she really enjoys it. Although I think she may have "learned" the tantrum thing from them, she has also learned to stay still while someone tries to wipe your nose or face, so that's awesome!!
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