Thursday, August 12, 2010

Mischief

No, she isn't soaking wet because of diaper malfunction.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Warning

Ok, so I've been thinking that I need to post some of the funny pictures that I spontaneously take of Kaycie doing typically destructive or funny stuff. The thing is, I usually take them with my phone and the quality is pretty terrible. But I'm going to post some anyway. Because she's pretty funny. I send these to Greg most days so he can keep up with what she's doing, why not share some with you too? (And Lauren, if you were my friend on BB messenger I could send these to you, too...) I'm getting a phone upgrade next month, maybe (but most likely not) it will be an improvement in camera quality. But who am I kidding? Next to my Nikon, phone cameras just suck. Anyway, just be aware that there might be some random posts that consist of low quality pictures of my kid doing weird stuff. It's because I'm posting from my phone. Here are a few recent samples:

Practicing for her future blog




Proof that she'll eat anything:




Destructor! But at least she loves books.




Begging for my toast. Who do you think will win?



And by the way, how about that new carpet! Woohoo!

9 Months - Time For Change (Updated)

My baby girl has now been my baby girl for as long as I was pregnant with her.

Wow.

Today Kaycie flipped the calendar to 9 months old. We went to her check up and she's been deemed perfectly healthy and a child giant. Her weight didn't go up as much as I thought it would, she was just under 21lbs which puts her in the 85 percentile. That's the first time she's been under the 90th percentile since she was born, and I'm sure all the extra exercise from crawling around looking for trouble helped! She measured in at 30 inches, which was off the chart. Literally, doc said they called it "greater than 95th percentile." That explains the jump to size 18 month pants a couple of weeks ago.

She has done so much in the past month, it's hard to capture it all. She had her first lesson about hats. Hats are defined as anything you can put on your head. She didn't much like her first lesson.



Later lessons went much better. She liked this hat, probably because it matched her outfit so well.




She also had the opportunity to hang out with two of her namesakes, Aunt Kay and Sharonda (also a Kay). I think Kaycie is going to find that she has been named after quite a few amazing women.



Since she's started crawling we have been having all kinds of fun playing chase around the house. Kaycie usually catches me, which means standing up beside me while I'm on my hands and knees, and beating me in the back. I'll cry out, "Attack!" and she'll usually respond with a battle cry of, 'AAAAAHHHH!" It's ridiculously funny.

She is also getting into trouble going and coming. She loves to pull up on things that aren't sturdy and a we've taken a few tumbles. Greg and I have decided that our goal as parents is to keep as much of her blood inside her as possible. I haven't felt like I've done a very good job of that this past month, as she took two spills that resulted in busted lips. The first one was pretty bad, not long after she started pulling up she tried to pull up on our bed by grabbing the sheet, slipped and hit the bed rail with her face. There was much crying and more blood than I care to think about now. I think that was her first lesson that mobility is a dangerous thing. I wish I could protect her better, but she has a little bit of an adventurous spirit that sometimes leads to pulling a side table down on her head. These things are going to happen.

She's also started standing up for several seconds on her own without support. I wonder if I will be writing about her walking in my next update post...

Her favorite toys right now are balls, anything that plays music that she can dance too (that girl LOVES to dance!), the thermostat, light switches, door knobs, and the curtains over the back door which are perfect for peek-a-boo. Her nemesis is wash cloths. She like to bend them to her will then use them as weapons. And of course to play peek-a-boo.

The next few weeks will likely prove to be a challenge for us all. She's still not sleeping well most night and that's going to have to change. We're going back to gremlin rules - no feeding after midnight. She's not going to like it, since she's been having a mid morning snack between 1 and 4am most mornings. Doc said it time for her to suck it up, in part because it's time to lose the bottle. Kaycie is very attached to her bottle. Like, time for a 12 step program attached. So as we move her off formula and onto milk over the next few weeks we're also moving her off the bottle and onto a sippy. She's been drinking water from a sippy with her meals for a couple of months and likes it fine, but it's not her bottle and she doesn't usually drink as much from it as she will a bottle. I don't know how she will take to milk - she's been on soy formula because she had a lot of tummy issues with milk early on - but we're will be finding out tomorrow morning. Hopefully it'll work out fine and we can expand her diet to include all kinds of fun dairy. She needs to have some ice cream! And mac and cheese, and just plain cheese, and yogurt... So many new things waiting for her. Oh, and she's pretty much done with baby food. She's a big girl, she wants to feed herself things like carrot sticks and diced fruit and sweet potato chunks and my toast. I can't imagine how I'll get enough food in her to survive once we're done with formula. It takes her forever to eat!

I can't believe the first time I posted this I forgot to mention her four new teeth, all of which arrived within 48 hours of each other. And her doc said she thinks a couple more are on their way. Don't kids start popping teeth out without even thinking about it at some point? Let's hope so, because Kaycie will have a mouth full in about a week at this rate. AND didn't mention that she's finally started babbling. She was down with the "ma-ma-ma" a couple of weeks ago, but then she learned the "bwa-bwa-bwa" and the "ma-ma-ma" was so last week. I've been desperately trying to get her to do the "da-da-da' but she's not into that yet.

For the record, I went back and updated that last paragraph (twice) not because I really think anybody cares, but because this is my record of her progress, and the way I'm keeping up with all the new things she's learning. I usually do these later at night after she's in bed, so I'm exhausted and forget a lot. When I think of important things later, I'll go back and add them for my own record.

Finally, I have about a dozen posts I want to do about things that are pretty much not at all related to Kaycie, things like trying to sell our house and the crazy things related to that. Things like the fact that she's napping well enough for me to be reading some great books again. Things like the fact that my parents bought a motor home, and I think that's awesome. Things like the fact that I've been off my ADD meds for two years now and how I'm managing. Things like how we're certifiably insane for planning a trip to Disney World for Kaycie's first birthday (we're soooo taking a set a grandparents!). I need to make a point, at least once a week, to reserve a nap time to sit and write. I miss blogging so much, but it's habit that it's too easy to fall out of when you're not sitting at a desk at work all day! =)

I can't leave a Kaycie update post with that, so instead I'll leave with one of my favorite pics of the past month. She's almost perfected her pitiful:

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Insight Into the Mind of a Kaycie

Things Kaycie Finds Offensive:

1. A neatly folded pile of washcloths
2. Rings (or stars) properly stacked on a stacker
3. Books neatly lined up on a bookshelf
4. Anything stored or organized in a basket, bucket, bag, or box
5. Order

Things Kaycie Finds Pleasing:

1. Chaos

This sheds some light into the Edwin vs Ian debate.*

It also makes me wonder if she would go totally insane if I put a stack of neatly folded washcloths inside a box with a ring stacker on top.

*We have left it up to Kaycie as to which of the Emmer boys she chooses to marry, Edwin, the brilliant leader of the Forces of Good, or his younger brother Ian, evil genius, leader of the Forces of Evil, and future Grand Ruler of the Universe.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

8 Months - Not So Little Anymore

My baby girl isn't a baby anymore. She's a big girl, eating her finger foods and exploring her world without reservation. Last time I posted she was rolling around like crazy. That lasted another week, by Father's Day she was crawling a couple of steps at a time, mostly motivated by the idea of getting the pup. Within two more days she was crawling like she was born to it. She immediately started pulling up to stand and trying to glide along the furniture. To be honest, crawling is just a means to an end. Standing up is where it's at!



There are a couple of benefits to crawling. Like playing with her new toy:



She also likes to chase me around boxes in the floor. Yes, we are packing up our house to have new carpet installed and hopefully sell the house so we can move, thus the pile of boxes everywhere that are sooooo tasty and fun. Everything is an adventure now. Most days I message Greg a picture of something new she's gotten into. I should do a post of just those pictures, but the camera on phone is pretty bad, so the quality of those pictures is awful on the big screen!

Kaycie has also quit sleeping well over the past couple of weeks. Dang 8 month sleep regression/growth spurt. She's been waking up 2-4 times a night starving. The pup isn't helping; he's woken her up the past two night with his crazy howling from the living room. I don't know what I'm going to do with all these growth spurts. She's already in 12 month clothes!

We finished our music class in June and I've already found a new class for fall, this one in Clinton instead of downtown Jackson. I haven't decided whether to register her for another music class (she loved the last one) or a sign language/music class. I want to get her in a Mother's Morning Out program where she can make some friends, but the only one I've found in Clinton won't take kids under 1, so I have her on the waiting list for November. Hopefully they'll have something open by then.

It's amazing how quickly she's growing and learning to do new things. I can't wait to see what this month brings. We go back to the doc for a checkup on her 9 month birthday, so we'll have another weight and length check then as well as some possible dietary changes. The last time Greg got on the scale with her she was a little over 20lbs. My baby girl is getting so big!