Lily: 1 Year and 26 Weeks (8/23/10 - 8/29/10)

Lily slept through the night again on Monday night until 4:45am, cried because she couldn't find her binkie, and then settled right back down to sleep until 7am. On Tuesday, she slept until 6am. I had to go in and check that she was still alive when my alarm went off! I prayed that she was finally turning the corner and becoming a good sleeper but we had many setbacks later in the week. She is so much better about going to sleep and settling back down after waking but our major issue has always been her frequent wakings. She woke up many times on Wednesday night but I stuck to my guns and refused to take her out of the crib. It never works for us to let her cry it out as she can cry for hours on end and never wind down. If she is unable to settle herself down, going in and patting her on the back and giving her binkie to her tends to help. On Thursday, night she had another one of her awful nights where she cried for about 5 minutes every hour. It would be soooo nice if her frequent wakings would stop. After nearly 18 months of this, I am more than ready for a good night's sleep myself! Lily has only slept through the night a handful of times in her entire life. I read a study that said that by the time a child is two, their parents have lost an average of six months of sleep. Although that seems like a lot, I feel like we've about doubled that with Lily. Instead of a good eight hours of sleep per night, I usually get a disjointed four which means that I have lost about 9 months of sleep already. ZZZZ....

I got out the Flow 'N' Fill Spout toy that I bought on Sunday for Lily's Monday night bath. She absolutely loved it and took nearly a half hour bath playing with it. She wanted to take a bath every night to play with her new toy. She discovered that her fingers pruned with the long baths and seemed very concerned. She didn't know what to think of the odd appearance of her fingers! Washing her hair has always been a battle because Lily refused to tilt her head back for rinsing and refused to let me use a cup to rinse her hair. I had to slowly rinse out the shampoo with a wet washcloth which took forever. Invariably, the soap would get in her eyes since she always fought me and tried to look down instead of up. Suddenly this week, Lily became very cooperative with hair rinsing and started letting me use a cup to rinse her hair while willingly tilting her head back. Yay! It goes so much faster now.

Thursday was a beautiful day so we took Lily to Kensington Metropark after work. We walked on the boardwalk by Wildwing Lake and explored the nature trails. Lily loved to run the trails and pick up leaves and sticks along the way. When we were on a slope close to a small pond, Lily was walking along and put a stick in her mouth so Paul let go of the empty stroller to get it from her. This caused the stroller to quickly roll down the hill toward the pond. Luckily I was fast on my feet and was able to catch it right before it went in the water!

Lily has been really good for her morning naps on the weekend but has been fighting her afternoon naps for us. She usually takes her morning nap around 9:30am but if she sleeps in for us, she ends up taking the nap later in the morning. She may be slowly transitioning to only requiring one nap per day. However, she always takes two naps at daycare but that could be because she has to get up so early on weekdays. On Saturday, she only took one nap and even that one she fought tooth and nail. She was clearly tired so I put her down around 11am but over an hour later, she was still awake. Listening to her on the monitor was quite entertaining. There would be a long period of silence, then talking, then a long period of silence, then crying, then a long period of silence, then singing, and back again. Then she started throwing everything out of her crib then would cry about it. I waited for about 15 minutes then went in to give her stuff back to her and tell her to go to sleep. This happened a few times. Finally, Paul went in and told her that Grandma was coming over but she wouldn't come over until Lily took a nap. At that, Lily quickly laid right down and fell asleep! My parents came over around 3pm right as Lily was waking up (yes, it took four hours to get her to take a 2 hour nap). They babysat her while we went to German Park with some friends. That will be on a separate post. Lily was still up playing when we got home around 9:30pm. She was having too much fun with grandma and papi to sleep. We visited with my parents for a little bit after we got home then we all went to bed early.

We hung around the house on Sunday and I make two batches of salsa with our huge surplus of tomatoes and peppers. Yummy! There is still a ton left so I will hopefully find time to make more batches later in the week. It takes a long time to do but the end result is so tasty.

Lily has been really affectionate this week. She is really into kissing and hugging which I absolutely love. She gives me a kiss whenever I ask for one then gives me a hug right afterward. She says "awwww" when she hugs and uses one of her hands to pat you while hugging. It melts my heart. She is very into equality so if I ask for a kiss, she has to give Paul one right afterward. She also likes to kiss and hug her stuffed animals. She has her animals kiss each other and makes a cute smooching sound when they do it. She is such a sweetheart!

I am proud to say that I have lost 10 pounds so far with my diet and exercise program. I am counting my calories on http://caloriecount.about.com/ and exercising 45-60 minutes per day for at least 6 days per week. If I work at Brighton, I am able to use their physical therapy gym after work since Paul is in charge of picking up Lily from daycare in Ann Arbor. It is a great facility and I am so grateful that they let me use it for free since I am an employee. If I am working in Ann Arbor, I usually ride our exercise bike in the basement and use our weight set down there after Lily is asleep. We also have a treadmill that is currently buried in our garage so hopefully Paul will make that accessible to me soon. The only problem with exercising at night after Lily goes down is that by the time I clean up dinner, tidy the house, make our lunches for the next day, take care of other pending household chores, and then exercise, I can't seem to get in bed before midnight.

Here are some pictures from this week.

My happy girl getting messy with her oranges on Monday evening. The poor thing got a mosquito bite smack dab in the center of her forehead during her nap at daycare:

Hmmm, which shoes shall I wear?:

Lily eating a cookie in the kitchen and watching Paul and I make dinner:

She decided it would be more comfortable to sit in her chair so she dragged it into the kitchen from the living room to observe us:

Lily loves to play with her new Flow ‘N’ Fill Spout. Yes, she is getting way too big for her toddler tub but she freaks out every time I try to give her a bath in the regular tub. She wanted to take a ton of baths this week to play with her faucet and cups:

So fun:

Running along the boardwalk at Kensington Metropark:

Don’t worry Lily, mommy’s right behind you:

Discovering leaves along the nature trails:

Silly girl running along the trail to see what’s ahead:

Lily loves to ride on daddy’s shoulders:

Goofy grin:

Lily loved to collect and play with sticks:

Observing nature from daddy’s shoulders again:

Playing on a stump:

Lily and daddy:

Riding on mommy’s shoulders:

Crossing a bridge to more trails:

My beautiful girl on Sunday:

Lily: 1 Year and 25 Weeks (8/16/10 - 8/22/10)

After talking up Lily’s new and improved sleep routine last week, she was a horrible sleeper this week. She went down okay but woke up crying for at least five minutes every hour on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. We were able to keep her in her crib for most of the night but it was brutal. I gave in and nursed her once in the night on Tuesday and Wednesday but stuck to my guns on the other nights. The rest of the week was better but she still woke up more frequently than her usual two times per night. The week wore us all out so by Friday night, both Paul and Lily were in bed shortly after 8pm. I should’ve gone to bed too but instead I enjoying having some time (and the television) to myself and caught up on some of my shows on the DVR.

On Saturday, we went to Pat and Auriel’s housewarming party. It rained earlier in the day but thankfully cleared up for the party. We got to see Paul’s old friend and my former co-worker, Chris at the party so that was nice. He lives in the U.P. now. Paul saw him about a year ago but I haven’t seen him since I was pregnant with Lily. We had a good visit with him and a fun time at the party. The rain had left a huge puddle in the middle of the cul-de-sac in front of their house. My mom taught Lily how to splash in puddles and she loves them now. She cries “puda, puda” when she sees one and I knew it was only a matter of time before she spotted theirs. She quickly did so Paul took her out and let her splash in it later that evening but he didn’t hold her hand and let her get carried away so she ended up falling down and getting her pants soaked. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and just kept on splashing. She was sad that I made her stop when it started getting dark out. Luckily, I brought a change of clothes for her because she was drenched and very cold. Silly girl! Lily took an instant liking to Pat’s friend, Eve. She even let Eve carry her off away from us to play which is very rare. Eve was tickled. It is so funny that Lily can take an immediate liking to some people that she’s never met yet take forever to warm up to others that she’s seen a million times.

Lily slept through the night on Saturday night until 4:45 on Sunday morning. Even then I just gave her back her binkie and she fell right back to sleep until 7am. Yay! That afternoon, we went to the Howell Melon Festival. It was a nice day. We mostly just walked around. Lily was too young for all of the rides but did like the Howell Nature Center animal bus. We found our new favorite toy store downtown called Razzmatazz Toys. It is awesome. Lily loved playing with everything in there so I got some good ideas for Christmas presents. I bought her a Yookidoo Flow ‘N’ Fill Spout toy which is a cute play faucet that suction cups to the tub wall and has a pump in it that re-circulates the bath water through its spout. It comes with all these different cups that do different things with the water. One floats, one doesn’t, one has a propeller on it that spins when you run water through it, and one has holes that spray the water out in a neat pattern when you run the water through it. I think it will be great entertainment for Lily who loves cups and running water. Being the “green” person that I am, I always feel guilty running the tub faucet for her to play in but she gets so upset when I shut it off. This is a great alternative. We didn’t have time to play with it on Sunday night but look forward to her trying it out next week.

Here are some pictures from this week.

I don’t know who’s having more fun with my old Fisher Price farm animals- Paul or Lily:

Lily giving her penguin a kiss:

Holy giant garden vegetables! Cat with an attitude included for perspective:

Lily splashing around in a puddle outside of the Roof’s house on Saturday. Her pants and feet were soaked but she was still having a ton of fun:

After getting changed into dry clothes, Lily played on a beach chair. She didn’t want to color, just play with the crayons:

Lily and daddy watching street performers at the Howell Melon Festival on Sunday:

Checking out the train at the Howell Depot Museum:

Lily loved to wander around downtown on daddy’s shoulders:

Making her elephant noises at me while waiting for lunch at Mr. B's Rustic Tavern:

Lily and I by some pretty flowers and a fountain. When we finally got Lily to stop staring at the fountain to take the picture, she made a funny face. Oh well:

Looking at a praying mantis with daddy:

A very sweaty pair of girls watching TV while dinner cooked:

Lily: 1 Year and 24 Weeks (8/9/10 - 8/15/10)

Lily said her first sentence very early on Monday morning. She woke up crying a little before 6am in her crib (yes, she actually lasted that long without coming into our bed despite waking a couple of times in the night). It was still dark out but Paul had the back porch light on. When I brought her to bed with me, she looked out the window and said “pond outside” in reference to the pond on the patio. Unfortunately, she was so excited about her discovery that she wouldn’t go back to sleep. She kept saying it over and over. That evening, we went grocery shopping then Lily and Paul played outside. Lily’s clothes got wet from playing in her car that had been out in the rain so when Paul brought her in, I took off her wet clothes and let her run around in her diaper. She absolutely loves to be naked but it brings out the wild jungle baby in her. She rambunctiously ran around the house, bounced on her mat, danced, and spun. All the while, she babbled constantly and laughed wildly. It was so funny. I got some videos of her talking which I have already posted. She crashed hard and fast after her bath.

After unhappily reviewing some pictures of myself on vacation, I started a big diet and exercise program on Wednesday. I am using caloriecount.about.com to track my caloric intake and exercise. Wish me luck!

My mom came over on Friday to clean our house for us. She had been doing this every other week after Lily was born but has not been able to come since November when she needed to help my grandma after her knee replacement then ended up breaking her foot shortly thereafter. It was great to have her help again. I greatly appreciated coming home to a clean house as well as the hours it saves me on the weekend. She stayed and visited with Paul and Lily when they got home from work and watched Lily for a bit while Paul worked in the yard. I didn’t see her because I had Mexicana night with Julie and Mary after work. We went over to Julie’s apartment to have fajitas and margaritas while Mary cut our hair. I had a lot of fun and love the new haircut that Mary gave me. She is definitely my new hairdresser from now on.

On Sunday, we went to dinner at El Charrito’s in Davison with my parents, grandma, Lee, and Robin to celebrate my dad’s birthday. Lily was restless and didn’t like all the attention she was getting at dinner (which is weird because she usually loves being the center of attention) so my mom, Robin, Paul, and I had to take turns going outside with her. There was a store down the street with cats in the window which she absolutely loved and insisted we keep taking her back to see. Needless to say, our meal was very interrupted. One of the problems was Lily’s continual fear of my Uncle Lee. He is the nicest person alive and she used to like him so I just don’t understand why she is so scared of him now. She cries every time she is near him and every time he talks to her. It breaks his heart. I hope she gets over it soon. After dinner, we went back to my parents’ house and were joined by Ashlee and Jeremy for pie and presents. Lily really liked playing outside and acted more like herself in the familiar environment of my parents’ house. She also got more and more relaxed as people left. After everyone was gone, she played outside for quite a while until the sun went down. With the exception of her odd behavior, it was a really nice day.

Lily’s sleep routine has undergone a lot of changes this week. I used to always have to sit in the rocking chair in her room as she fell asleep but this stopped helping her go to sleep so I just started putting her in bed, saying goodnight, then leaving the room. She used to cry when I tried this but now she just quietly goes to sleep on her own. I am very proud of her. She still gets up around 1am and 3am but we are now able to keep her in her crib. I go in when she cries at 1am and usually just have to give her binkie back to her and tell her to lie down and go to sleep. Paul goes in at her 3am waking and does the same. She used to stand up in bed when she woke in the night and would scream until we picked her up but now when she fusses in the night, she is usually still laying down or just sitting up looking groggy when we go in there and usually her problem is just that she can’t find her pacifier. When we give her back the pacifier and tell her to go back to sleep, she lays right back down, waves goodbye to us, and goes right back to sleep. It is an amazing change. Yay! It is nice to have the bed to ourselves and nice that I can share nighttime duty with Paul as I also weaned her from nighttime nursing this week. Yet another big change! I only nurse her right before I put her to bed then she usually comes into bed with us around 5 or 6am for a morning nursing. There has been the occasional set-back which is to be expected. For example, on Tuesday night she wouldn’t calm down from her 3am waking so I finally brought her into bed with me at 4am. I nursed her but then ended up having to take her back to her crib at 5am because she was thrashing all over so bad that none of us could sleep.

Lily’s speech has continued to grow by leaps and bounds this week. She mimics many words we say and catches on so quickly now. I receive a weekly ‘My Toddler This Week’ email from babycenter.com. This week it mentioned, “You're probably spending a lot of time trying to figure out what your toddler says, but does she understand everything you say? Speak in clear, simple sentences to make sure you're getting your point across.” Lily has definitely understood all that we say for a long time now. Even before she could communicate clearly to us, she was always better behaved when I explained things to her like why I was giving her medicine or what was going to happen that day. She is very observant of the world around her. It is just more noticeable now that she is better able to get her point across to us.

Here are some pictures from this week.

Lily absolutely loves to play on Grandma's pack-n-play mattress. Since we borrowed the pack-n-play from my parents to take up north with us last weekend, we had it sitting by the door for a few days until we saw my parents again. Every evening, Lily would drag the mattress out to the living room to play. Here she is watching Jack's Big Music Show in her diaper on Monday evening while cuddling with her monkey leash:

Lily making her 'funny face' while touring the yard looking at the flowers with daddy:

We took Lily to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor after work on Thursday as it is right down the street from her daycare. It was a really hot day. Note that in the pictures she starts out looking normal and by the end (a mere 15 minutes later), she looks like I threw a bucket of water on her. That girl can sweat! Here she is delighted in the discovery of a bench:

She loved this water fountain. A few seconds after I snapped this picture, she tried to crawl in for a swim:

My cutie hanging out on the bench:

Fabulous Flamingos! Where?:

Here they are:

Lily loved playing with the flamingos:

Hey, wait a minute! You look a lot like the bird on my shirt. I wonder if my mom dressed me in this on purpose:

Exploring different flamingo displays:

Race you to the children's garden:

Lily loved making music with the bells:

And couldn't pass up the opportunity to run across a bridge:

It's so hot out. Perhaps this water will cool me off:

Maybe mom and dad won't notice if I climb in for a little swim:

Lily loved the butterfly chairs:

Some real butterflies at the botanical garden:

Goofy girl putting cups on her feet on Saturday:

She then continued her silliness by insisting on eating her muffin with a fork:

Playing on a cool new toy at grandma's house on Sunday before papi's birthday dinner:

Lily played with toys while Lee, Robin, nana, and grandma watched papi open presents:

Ashlee, Lee, and Robin watching Lily:

Paul, Jeremy, and papi:

Lily with my grandma:

My dad blowing out the candles on his birthday pies:

Lily with papi and a refrigerator magnet:

This rolling toy belonged to my mom's friend's children who are my age. The toy was passed to another friend who then passed it to my mom. Lily loved running around with it while chanting, "go, go, go." She couldn't decide if she wanted to play with it or her golf club so she chose both:

Okay, time to get serious about my golf game:

Should I use this club or my wedge?:

Both Lily and papi love to golf:

My little monkey squealed with delight when daddy let her sit in the tree:

Reading her new favorite book with grandma: