Tag Archives: sippy cup

Maeve’s one year check-up

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This morning was Maeve’s one year check up. It is also Lewis’ birthday. We woke up, opened some birthday presents in bed and went for a birthday breakfast at our favourite spot before going to the Doctor for her appointment.

Maeve is now 20.2lbs and 30” tall!

Doctor M was very happy with her progress. She said that it’s okay for her not to be talking yet as long as she’s babbling a lot which she is. She’s started making new vocal sounds and sounds like an alien character or something (“b’duk duka ticuh” etc). She commented on her friendly social nature saying that most 1yr olds are dubious of her but I think Maeve is a generally good judge of character. She can be shy with some strangers and friendly with others.
She was given the all clear to eat any food she wants! Yay! And as for the reflux Dr said to try her on the ¼ tablet once a day for a few more weeks and then try stopping altogether! She’s been doing the once a day for 10 days now so I’ll give it to the end of the month and see what happens. I can’t believe we might be done with medicine. She still spits up once in a while, but it’s not even every day now 🙂

After the doctor saw her, she got 3 sets of shots (2 in one arm, 1 in the other). She cried a lot, but the nurse was very quick. Then we went to get blood drawn which #1 was the rotten cherry on the top of the pile of crap that was the 3 shots and #2 was just miserable for all involved 😦 she cried so much and was sobbing throughout. I had to hold her legs between mine and wrap my arms around her so she couldn’t wriggle. The nurse tried twice to find a vein in the arm, when she found a vein she wasn’t able to get any blood so she had to do a pin prick on the finger and collect the blood for 2 vials that way (which of course takes so much longer). Maeve was sobbing, Lewis was unhappy, I wasn’t happy, I felt sorry for the poor young nurse too. It was a rough 10 minutes or so.

Since her birthday she has had a few new things going on:

Pooping. She has started to go to the bathroom door when she needs to poop. It’s only happened a few times. Or she’ll come over to me and want to climb up on my lap for a cuddle and I get a whiff 🙂

Weaning: A few weeks before her birthday we were down to one or two breast feedings per day, then a few days after her birthday I went out for the afternoon and she wasn’t able to have her mid-afternoon snack so she went all day with only sippy cups. I think it was the next day that I managed to distract her and she went 2 days without breastfeeding! I was so surprised when I went to bed that night I had to text Christina 😛 We are now managing to breast feed every 2nd or 3rd day. If she sees my boobs when I’m changing she gets excited and sometimes she’ll grab at my shirt but I can usually offer her a sippy cup or a pacifier and she’s happy. Now I have to hope she doesn’t get too attached/dependant on a pacifier. I’m trying to keep it out of sight and only offer it at nap time and even then only when she’s fussy about going down.

So she’s now 30” tall which means her reach is even longer and not too many surfaces are safe from her grabby little paws. She can also climb, remember?! She can climb onto the loveseat and onto the windowsill behind; she can climb onto the couch and then onto the table behind; the other day we turned around to see that she can climbed onto the windowsill by my bedside and was looking out at the world below!!!; she can move the step stool around the kitchen and has started to attempt to climb it… This morning she wobbled the rack where her food is kept just enough to knock a munchies cup filled with cheerios down. I might have to do some rearranging!

I’ve bought a little harness/leash type thing at Babies R Us. I’m hoping that this way I can wear her when we go out and then when I get tired or she gets fidgety she can walk around without darting into a street. I am also looking at getting a cheap umbrella stroller for some outings so that we can ride the bus if needed. The jogging stroller is great for most trips but it’s a pain to break it down if I want to ride on the bus (and I hate taking up the space on the bus if I don’t break it down).

I love the little person she’s becoming. I look at pictures or read my journal from a year ago and it amazes me. Those first few weeks were a haze of sleep and feeds and now she’s a blur as she zips around the condo.

The countdown begins!

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The part that’s about her

One month to go until the Big First Birthday! She’s had so many milestones in the past 11 months that it’s hard to imagine what else she’ll accomplish by her birthday 🙂

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She’s finally getting some teeth in that goofy grin of hers! Her first tooth (bottom left centre) broke through on May 22nd, the 2nd tooth (bottom right centre) poked through on May 30th. She’s getting droolly again which makes me think maybe we’ll see some top teeth for her birthday. And her hair is slowly getting thicker and longer 🙂 It’s fun to bathe her and see her hair get messed up by the water. Sometimes she even gets a little bedhead when she wakes up 🙂
She’s about 20lbs now and seems pretty tall (judging by the amount she bonks her head on the underside of our dining table) but if I measure her she is still 28.5”. Maybe she’s just standing up straighter?

Clothing: I finally caved and packed up her 6mo pyjama’s(and tops) which means she has 1 pair of 6-9mo, 1 pair of 9mo and 1 pair of 12mo PJs. So I have been on the hunt for some 12mo PJs. I got one pair this week and while they looked so long and gangly on the hanger they actually fit her nicely but give her room to grow. Other than PJs she is now (at 11mo) wearing 9mo/12mo tops and 6-12mo bottoms. I figure she can wear smaller bottoms as it’s summer and we can pretend they are capri pants 🙂

Playing and Growing:
At the beginning of this month Lewis brought out his soccer ball thinking it would be fun to play with her but she got so frightened of it. When I was sorting out the closet it is kept in kept in she gave it a very wide birth and stood behind me holding onto me. She would start crying if she saw it. It was rather strange to see her scared of something. We’ve seen her frustrated by stuff but not frightened like this. After a few days I started to gently introduce her to the ball by leaving the closet door open and ignoring the ball then holding it and letting Maeve touch it. And now, for the past week or so she has been having a great time playing ball with us. She will roll it around and play ‘fetch’ with me. She will roll it toward me and then pick it up and carry it to me if I ask her to bring it to me 🙂

 A couple of weeks ago she started bringing her sleep sack to me as an indicator that it might be nap time 🙂 and she’ll also bring us her toys or books she wants us to read.

She’s started playing with clothes and trying to dress herself. She will pick up an item (my t-shirt or her pjs or something) and try to put it on her head. One day she got her head in the leg of her pjs and was toddling around for a few minutes making us laugh. Of course anything we put on her head like a hat or sunglasses gets ripped off immediately 😛

She loves playing Horsey! When I sing the William Tell Overture she will bounce/dance. It started when I would bounce her on my knee to the tune, then she would do it in my arms and now when she ‘catches’ meI will lift her up on to my back and she will ride me like a horse. Sometimes I will sing the tune, but maybe I need to start teaching her “Yee Haw” 😛 It’s kind of hilarious.

She is working on her climbing/exploring. She has now climbed onto the coffee table where her toys are (using the little chair that’s next to it as a step) and the bottom step of the little step ladder in her room. She has started climbing into her car seat (which can have a tendency to rock if she’s not careful). The other day Lewis left one of the cubes for our shelf unit on the floor. Miss Maeve thought this looked interesting. From my position I saw something get flung behind her and when I went to see what she was getting into I saw her practically doing a headstand in the cube with her legs waving in the air! This is why you never leave a bucket or tub with 2” of water sitting around! She was totally fine but it was a reminder to both of us not to leave his valuables on the floor anymore! Just yesterday she finally noticed the cabinets in the bathroom so I have had to wrap rubber bands around the door handles to stop her getting in there (she still tries to get down either side of the toilet though so I need to find some space to store all those things- toilet brushes are very interesting apparently!)

Now that the weather is nice we have been going to the park at least once a week. I started extending my walk to/from the store to swing by the park and see if anyone we know is there. One day on the way home we made some new friends (I’ve mentioned N and her daughter Elena, who is 7mo).

The music lessons I signed up for on AmazonLocal ended up not happening. We went along and waited outside the store front for almost an hour (well over an hour as we got there before 9am for a 9:15am class and waited until 9:55. I tried calling the teacher a couple of times to see if maybe class had been cancelled for the day,and it turned out she had had to shut down her business due to lack of customers so I am waiting for a refund from her before I try signing Maeve up in another music class. That day I decided to explore a different park. Poor Maeve had been strapped to me in the Moby Wrap for almost 2 hrs by this point so I wanted her to have some run around time. We went to Wicker Park, met lots of lovely mums and babies and played for almost an hour and a half before heading home.
Last week we started swimming lessons! She was kind of clingy as we went into the pool, but she soon relaxed and splashed about and enjoyed herself thoroughly. I’m hoping she’ll get a lot from the class and N told me that Welles Park down in Lincoln Square has an indoor pool so once class is over we can have some play dates there and maybe Lewis can join us if we go on the weekend 🙂

Food and drink: We are down to 1 (or 2) breadfeedings per day and bottle the rest of the time. I try to save the boob feeding for her afternoon nap snack because that’s when she’s most cranky and wanting a cuddle. I am also trying to start transitioning her to sippy cups so I make sure she has at least one sippy cup drink per day.
She’s had some grilled cheese sandwich! And yolk only omelet! Even with only 2 small teeth I like that she’s able to eat more foods now. It’s nice to go out and know that if I didn’t bring enough snacks or food for her she can have stuff off my plate. We are starting to introduce the spoon again. If she is eating yogurt or applesauce or mashed potato I’ll put some food on the spoon and hand it to her and she’ll work on that for a while until the spoon is almost clean 🙂

Father’s Day: Maeve and Lewis celebrated their first Father’s Day this month! Unlike Mother’s Day where they were able to give me the gift of free time to do with as I pleased, we spent the day together as a family looking around REI and planning our upcoming camping trip. I’m not so good at doing the whole breakfast thing as Lewis is so instead I treated him to lunch at Burger Bar. Maeve and I also got him a T-shirt with Darth Vader on it and her a complimentary onesie with Princess Leia on it. Vader and Leia might not exactly have the perfect father/daughter relationship but I think the geekiness works for them.😛

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I wish I had a better picture of them.

We are planning her birthday party already. I want to recreate the Carnival themed Unshower Angela threw last summer but keep it small this year. First birthdays are more about the parents than the birthday girl I think. Maeve won’t have any memories of it (except via photos and video) so she doesn’t need a billion baby friends etc, so we’re keeping it to family and a couple of close friends. I guess it helps that some friends are having a housewarming party the same night so our little celebration won’t get too out of control, although it’s sad we won’t make it to the housewarming. The social calendar gets busier and busier every summer! I am hoping to have a banner to hang up and our good friend Peg (who took our wedding photographs) is coming to take photo’s of the day. I’m glad Maeve has a summer birthday for outdoor parties. It’s nice that Riley has a winter birthday and Maeve has a summer one so they can split the seasonal events. Perhaps Miller sibling will fill another gap in the calendar if/when (s)he comes along.

The Part that’s about Me.
I feel like we (Maeve and I) are in a realistic place for me being able to do more ‘me’ type activities past the daily chores. I’m not ready to put her in day care and ‘go back to work’ but I’m finding more time for my personal housebound projects.

I’m finding the time to work on this blog more seriously. I know there are a lot of blogs about pregnancy/motherhood/parenthood out there and I’m not sure what I’m adding to the conversation, but I’m happy if anyone is following me on this journey and if I’m able to help any other lost/struggling new parental souls. I’m enjoying talking with the other mums I know on Facebook and this would just create a different forum for me. Angela suggested looking at BlogHer stuff and I will definitely add that to my list of things to research, I think it could be very useful.

I am trying to get my Etsy store, Alice’s Cat, registered as a legitimate small business. My new local friend told me about a local art show in October, but registration is this Friday (June 22nd) and applicants are required to have an IBT# (Illinois Business Tax). Getting an IBT would take 2-3 business days and I still need to expand my collection of work to even apply. So, here I am figuring that perhaps this year’s Ravenswood Art Walk won’t happen but I can still register as a small business and see if there are any other shows I can take part in.

So here we are in her 12th month of ongoing adventures. On the one hand Maeve is certainly able to entertain herself enough that I can do some art/craft projects, but on the other hand she gets into *everything* constantly so I am always stopping her from pulling books of my shelves or pulling clothes out of the hamper or pulling computer cables or phone cords or trying to get behind the mirror or into boxes/cupboards etc!