Finally!!!

It's finally happened! Bug has teeth! WOOHOO!!!! Her two lower central incisors have just made their debut! (and almost drew mommy's blood!!! stinkers are sharp!)

We were having a great day today and I was curious but not in the mood to jinx it! She hadn't tried to chew on my fingers all day so I left it alone, then around 6pm she reached for a finger, bit down and OW! Two tiny little teeth poking through. SO CUTE!!!

It's funny, I can't contain my excitement, yet I can't sit here and write it down either! hmm, I think I'll have a glass of wine in celebration! Yay Bug!!!!!

Wind

It was windy last week. I really didn't think much of it.....until I saw this

hmmm, a little more nervous about wind now......

Too Cute!

Taken from a parenting email I received

How to babyproof:

• Throw away the pennies. Just throw them away.

• What are those things anyway, the ones under the sink? They look dangerous, but you don't even recognize them. Oh! They seem to be "cleaning products"! Get rid of them.

• Use duct tape to attach bubble wrap to bathtub faucet, coffee-table edges, tile floor, and dog's teeth.

• Use duct tape to attach bubble wrap to baby.

Anyone know where I can get some MiracleGro for teeth?

Bug's bottom two teeth are very close to coming out. Very close. Which means I am very close to a full mental breakdown. Very close.

Yesterday was the worst. She couldn't play in, on or with her toys without crying. She cried when I held her, cried when I put her down, cried in her bed, cried in her sleep. She even cried when I let her play on mommy's bed (the funnest place ever) with mommy's real TV remote (now you know I was at my wits end).

So, since I was about to lose my mind and she was in so much pain while awake, I decided to let her go to bed early last night. She's always happy in the tub so I figured we could take a long bath and then off to bed.

Having expectations was my first mistake. Thinking my night could turn decent was the second.

We still use her baby tub for baths as she just learned how to sit up and still falls down a lot. Plus the real tub has the stickies to prevent slipping and I know I don't like them on my own tush, so I don't think she'd appreciate it on her precious cushy place either.

So I lay her in her tub full of soapy water and instead of laying nicely and talking to me like she usually does, she cries a little and flips over to her tummy where she does a face dive into the water and swallows a slew of soapy bath water. Fantastic. I sat her up and patted her back until she caught her breath, then I tried to lay her on her back again. She decided it was time for Round Two. Reread what you just read and you'll be caught up.

I blame the new kiddie pool.

So now she's freaked and every time I try to lay her back she starts screaming. Wonderful. I washed her in a sitting position then drained the water from the tub. Damnit, I'm not going to let her go to bed afraid of laying in water! Tub empty, I lay her down and she freaks a little but is then ok. Cup by cup I fill the tub with water until it's at it's normal depth and she's ok. Yay. Childborn aquaphobia averted.....this time.

Anywho, back to the point, my nice long soak in the tub turned into a ten minute fiasco which only riled her up more. Life is trying at times.

Luckily enough, she doesn't seem to have any problems with swallowing half her body weight in soap (exaggerate? who me? never!) and she went to sleep immediately. Little victories right?

WRONG! She went to bed an hour early, which means she should be able to get an extra hour of sleep right? Of course not! She woke up two hours early. I'm telling you, my sanity is slowly creeping away from me.

Now it would be one thing if she woke up happy but she didn't. Today is turning out worse than yesterday because at least yesterday she would take naps. Not today.

Someone told me that once the tooth cuts through the gums things would get better. Hence the title of this post. Someone tell me where to get some MiracleToothGro and I'll rub it on her gums until she's full of pearly whites!!!!!

If you don't hear from me for a while you can bet my search has proved fruitless and they've shipped me off to the nice room with the soft, cushy, white walls screaming to no one in particular, "push tooth, push!!!!"

{Me? Cry all day? No way!! I'm too sweet and innocent for that!}

While I'm at it....

The next blog I read was quite interesting. I'm so glad my labor story holds nothing to this one.

You have to read!

I found this page through another page and it just cracked me up.

So I encourage you to find out what it's like to take kids on a field trip during mating season

Quite entertaining :)

The Sweetest Thing....

Bug has been teething lately. In fact I think I can see the tip of a tooth starting to poke through. It's greatly exciting to me, not so much to her. She's been in loads of pain today. I can definitely mark today as her fussiest day ever. None of my distraction tactics were working. I was getting very frustrated until.....

...we were sitting on my bed this afternoon, Bug chewing on her teething ring, me looking for the next thing to distract her from the pain. She started crying and I was about to lose my mind. Then she looked at me with that sad, pitiful face she makes and frantically grabbed at my shirt on my shoulder. When she got a good hold she pulled herself in close.

She wanted me to pick her up.

She wanted her mommy and had never displayed that kind of affection before.

I'm telling you, I melted.

I can't even begin to describe the feelings of love and appreciation I felt at that moment. My daughter, my little angel, the love of my life, wanted nothing more than to be held by her mommy. No endless supply of toys would suffice, she just needed some mommy love.

This mommy thing is totally underrated! Nothing in life could possibly be better than this.

{Bug having a happy moment this morning before the pain really set in}

This marks the end of worry free days....

I used to be able to leave Bug on a carpeted floor for a short time, 5 - 10 minutes, and nothing bad would happen. She'd play, maybe roll over a couple times, no big deal. Then after she hit her head on the rocking chair a couple weeks ago I decided not to leave her alone in her room anymore. Yet it was ok in my room. The most she ever did in there was destroy my piles of laundry.

Until today that is.

It was 7:15pm. I went downstairs to make her bedtime bottle as I always do. She was playing safely with her toys in the middle of the room. Halfway through the bottle making process I hear muffled crying. Wondering what in the world she's doing, I run up the stairs.

I burst into my room and Bug is.......nowhere. Gone. Dissapeared.

Except that I hear her crying.

First thought 'what in the hell?!?!?!?!'

Second thought 'damn David Bowie had better not have taken my baby!' (RE: Labyrinth)

Even as those thoughts went through my head I already knew where she was. I guess it's mother's intuition....who knows. So I get down on all fours, flip up the comforter and there is my crazy child. On her tummy, almost halfway under the bed. I think she would have been fine under there if she hadn't happened to roll directly under one of the two bed posts. Every time she lifted her head to look, roll, whatever, she would smack it on this post. Hence the crying. Other than that she was fine, a little scared and probably had a bit of a headache, but nothing too terrible.

So I drag her out, quite the feat considering the sideboard of the bed was too low for her to come out with her head up, how in the world did she get under there??? I had to hold her head to the floor to get her out. If she has a rug burn on her cheek in the morning we'll know why.

I wish I'd have taken a picture. The camera was right there by the bed, less than two feet from my hand. I had thought about it but it just didn't seem right since she was crying :)

Five minutes later she has her legs under the bed going for round two. If she ends up under there again I'm taking a picture, cry or no cry!

And tomorrow I'm looking into baby gates or excessive amounts of pillows!!!!

Isn't it time for an update?

I was sitting at the computer, reading all my favorite blogs when I thought, "hmm, I have one of those don't I?" Then I realized it has been over 10 days since I posted anything. Do you know how much can happen in the life of a 5.5 month old in ten days?!

1) Bug has learned how to sit up by herself. She can't get to the position by herself yet, but if sat up she can stay there until she sees something she wants behind her, then it's 'kerplunck'.

2) She has almost figured out how to crawl. She gets up on all fours, scoots her little knees forward, but doesn't realize her hands have to move too. Once again, 'kerplunck'.

3) She's learned if she hits her head on the side of mommy's bed enough that mommy will stand her up and she can hold onto the side of the bed and stand by herself. That is, until she lets go to grab at the bed sheet. Guess what happens then, you got it! 'kerplunck'!

4) We can see the outline of two teeth coming in through her bottom gums. Might take a while to get here but they're coming....and she is pissed! All day long I've had a cranky baby!

Oh, there's much more that she has learned lately but those are the exciting ones!

On the sleep issue however, mommy and daddy have given up and decided to try the "Cry It Out" method of sleep training. Before anyone thinks poorly of me, just remember that each baby is different and what you want for your child may not be what they need.

I remember just three months ago when I was 100% against any forms of CIO (cry it out) sleep training. In those three months, I have read more books/articles on baby sleep than I have Stephen King books (believe me, that's a lot of books!). I have tried everything I came across (interestingly enough, most of the books are strikingly similar in their methods). Yet there were no results. If I offered any sort of help in getting her to sleep on her own, it just wouldn't work. There was one method I tried for over six weeks with absolutely nothing to show for it. Needless to say, I was tired, frustrated and losing my mind.

The"final straw" came this past Sunday night. I remember Bug waking up at 1:30am and I thought, maybe she'll fall back to sleep. Why I would think that I don't know, she'd never gone to sleep on her own before, why would that time be any different? And it wasn't. But I was able to go back to sleep. I woke up at 6:15am to find her sound asleep, I thought the unthinkable had happened and she'd actually gone back to sleep on her own. Come to find out, I'd gotten up at 3am, went to her, tried to rock her to sleep, yelled when I got frustrated and Josh came and put her to sleep. Apparently I was asleep through all this. That is not cool in my book. So I decided to take drastic measures the next night. There was just no way I could let that happen again.

Anyway, the drastic measures was the CIO method. Kills me to do it but at least I'm wide awake and completely aware of the situation. Funny thing is, first night she slept 11 straight hours. Second night she woke at 4am and put herself back to sleep within 30 minutes. Today she's even going to sleep on her own at naptime. The most crying she's ever done is 50 minutes, which is nothing compared to the two hours she'd cry in the middle of the night, every night, when she'd wake and we couldn't get her back to sleep!!!! And she seems much happier too. As against CIO as I was, it has definitely solved a lot of our problems where other, gentler methods didn't work at all.

I'm proud to say my child is well rested and, if I could get to bed at a decent hour, I'd be well rested too!! That's pretty much the update.

Kupo!

Being as I am a child of my generation, I have always been an avid computer lover & TV watcher. And, spending my teenage years in a small town, with nothing much to do, I became a video game addict. Not all video games, mainly the one player fantasy/adventure games. Like Final Fantasy.

I remember when I played my first Final Fantasy game, I stayed glued to that console for days. Constantly hogging it. I can't remember exactly how long it took me to finish the game but I'm pretty sure it was a matter of days.

That was Final Fantasy 7. Then I moved on to Final Fantasy 8 but didn't really like it. Gave up the addiction for a while. Then came Final Fantasy 9. God how I loved that one! I never got to finish it because it belonged to a friend. After I moved to California I had my tonsils or wisdom teeth taken out, can't remember which, and a couple dear friends bought me a $50 PlayStation. First thing I did, even under the influence of prescription drugs, was go out and buy FF9. I played almost as much as I did the first game...but not quite. I was getting better. :)

Then I became busy and the PlayStation collected dust. Since then SquareSoft has come out with numerous Final Fantasy games. Ten, Ten-2 (not sure what that's about), Eleven, Twelve, who knows how many others...what to do. The lure was too much. I had to play again. :)

So, last month Josh decided he desperately wanted a PS3 for a new baseball game they had come out with. I told him he could buy a PS3 if I could buy a PS2 (so we could both play our games at the same time and not squabble like school children over whose turn it is). He agreed to my bargain (yes, this is quite similar to last years deal; he can have an XBox 360 if I get a Wii. I got my Wii, he never went out and got his XBox. But he does enjoy the Wii as much as I do).

So, PS2 set-up and waiting for me, I went scouring for FF10. I found it on EBay, it came two days later and I feel the familiar obsession starting in already. I've been very good though. I play at most, two -three hours a day...hmm, better make that on average. Attention does not get taken away from Bug, she loves her independant play and I used to spend that time on the computer or watching TV, I feel it's much better used this way. Yes, I could do dishes or clean the house, but then I'd have nothing to do after Bug goes to bed....and that's the time the obsession would take hold. I'm positive I'd stay up into the wee hours of the night playing. So, after Bug goes to bed, the PlayStation does as well.

And that means I do.

And then I dream of Chocobos, Moogles and Summoners...... (yes I know you probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about but that's ok, some of you do, and those are the ones who will understand the obsession)