Wednesday April 30, 2003 [10:44am].
We had (my mum, uncle, Mina and I) just come back late from trying to find Blue's Clues bits for the party. She was super unhappy having to be in the car seat and the only thing that calmed her down was me singing Blue's Clues songs. We got up stairs to a happy waiting Dad. She pops up and starts bawling because I went to the kitchen. I go over to her where she is standing by the video trunk, crying "Mum-mum". I open my arms, like I always do and she made a step. I was shocked. She cried a little more and made three big steps right into my arms. Of course she had to do a repeat performance and did it twice this morning.
I am excited? HELL YEAH! My little baby girl turn one tomorrow and she walked. I love it!
I am weaning her from the boobie and I think it is working. She drink regular cow's milk, not a whole lot but enough. And she loves it. But hates it warm. Go fig. She had goldfishes today for the first time. *I love the fishes cuz their so delicious...* She was screaming at me because I was not handing them over fast enough.
But that wasn't her only first today. Somehow I had a plastic bag that had an open packet of cat food. Yet you guessed it, a morsel fell on the floor and she scooped it up and popped it in her mouth, swallowing before I could get it out.
So a day and a half to my girl's birthday and what does she do? She makes her first steps. That's right you heard correctly. Her first steps. Let me lay it our for you.
Friday 25, 2003 [6:24pm]
Less than a week until her birtday party. Even less until her birthday. Do I have everything ready? Not a damn thing. I have't sent out any invitations. Gonna call everyone. They all know already, always asking. I am just bad with party planning. I never had to do it until I got preganant. I have never had a birthday party for myself or anything. No one remembers it anyway, why try to have a party.
It is going to be simple, mostly family. No clowns or anything crazy. I'll save that for her next birthday. I am excited. But the grandparents are more excited. My mom calls everyday with little plans and I hear David talking to his mom about it. His mom, brother, brother's girlfriend Deb are coming down. I don't know if his dad is coming, I assume that he is but David hasn't formally told me. Lot's of photo ops. Like that I can get pictures for her family tree. I have to remember to ask his parents about the family tree.
I just pray that it will be warm and won't rain so we can go to the park. And I have to find games to play. For the children and adults. I'll be damned if they are not going to get in on the fun.
My honey is going to be a year old. Yay!
Wednesday 23, 2003 [4:08pm]
The girl can't walk but she sure can climb. She just climbed out of her walker. No way to fix that. I turned away for a minute and she was on the top ready to fall over the sides. She's some type of dare devil. She spends her time climbing on chairs, diving off couches and using me like a jungle gym. I see it coming, baby's first black eye. They way she goes head first there might be two.
Monday 21, 2003 [12:29pm]
It's really silly. We should have done it along time ago but we didn't. Early, early this morning Mina woke up, like should does sometimes. It was only like 4am or something like that. Usually what I do when this happens is I go to her, talk to her, is she is crying hardcore I will pick her up for a bit until she calms down then put her back in her crib so she can put herself to sleep. Well it wasn't working this morning. She started bawling. And from the living room we heard a large thump! We both ran in to the bedroom to find her crawling on the floor, crying less which is funny. She got her legs over the railing. It was stupid of us because she has been climbing up and down the furniture with ease. So we should have lowered her bed a long time ago. But we didn't. So at four something in the morning David lowered it. He was beating himself up about it, saying he should have been responsible to do it before. But I told him she's ok, and all babies do it at some point. And he shouldn't feel guilty. I mean I didn't lower it either and I knew it was going to happen.
But she is fine. Her tumble didn't hurt her at all. In fact I believe she came down feet first because when she fell she didn't scream like she usually does when she bumps her head and it sounded soft. Besides she turns pink so quickly when she hits a spot. I didn't see any pink spot, no bumps.
I have no idea what was keeping her up but she refused to go to sleep. David and I had been up watching tv, and I was doing PhotoShop work on the computer. So by the time she got up we were tired. Mina didn't care. She stayed up, crying, fussing and wiggling. David went to work without getting sleep. She finally went to sleep around 7:30 - 8. I got to nap for about an hour before she woke up. I am surprised I am not really tired. Go fig. Parents, we compensate somehow.
Hopefully she will sleep well tonight.
Sunday April 20, 2003 [9:29pm]
Everyday that passed Mina becomes more and more playful. More aware. I swear that she is going to be a professional dancer. She dances to everything. I put on the Teletubbies for her for the first time this weekend and she even danced to that music. I find those damned things scary but she seemed captivated. I wonder how they even came up with the idea of such creepy creatures. But kids seem to love them. Balaram used to love them too. He six now so he could care less. I guess because I used to watch it with him so much I am now immune to the evil Teletubbies. And there tubby toast.
Her best friend seem to be this baby Zoe doll from Sesame Street. My friend Laura gave it to her for Christmas and she liked it then, but now... OMG she was holding it just the way I hold her. Giving her kisses, dragging her all over the place, laughing at her everytime the doll talked.
David took some nice pictures of her with Zoe and with Elmo, her used to be best friend. Until his batteries died. Now he just lays there looking like a casualty of war. Poor Elmo. He's been ditched.
I am feeling a little worried. She is a little too attached to the boobie. I mean how the hell am I too ween her? Nothing I am doing is working. Maybe I am giving in too soon. I have no idea. I just worry about getting all that she needs. And pumping is so bloody hard, especially when she is demanding boobie all the time. And going back to work now is just going to shatter it all. She is going to freak.
Friday April 18,2003 [2:23am]
It was a little hard putting Mina to sleep last night. I was getting a bit frustrated because I was ready for her to sleep, but when she finally fell out I snuck off and watched tv for a couple of hours.
Poor thing for some reason she is afraid of Vielka's husband Bruce. He came home yesterday and only said "Hey." and she burst into tears. Every time she would just hear his voice she would run to me or clamp on like a crab. I can't imagine what about him makes her scared, he doesn't have a booming voice which is something I found scared her at times. He doesn't look freakish or anything. He is just a regular man, but he shakes her. But the more we visit I assume the less she will be afraid.
We can home pretty late, way past her bed time. I feel bad when that happens, I feel like a bad mom. I feel somehow that if I know we can't make it home by her bed time we should stay where we are or try and make it. But we go home at 10pm. She was knocked out in the car but it is not the same as being home in your own bed. I should have know should would sleep hard. Nicholas and her played hardcore. She crawled after her as if she were a race car. I can imagine the madness when she does start walking.
Thursday April 17, 2003 [12:10am]
Mina and I came over to my cousin Vielka's house to spend the day (which turned into two) with her and her two kids. It has been great. They love Mina so much. And Nicolas, who is four, does everything that he can to impress Mina, tries to keep her happy when she is crying. When I see him I see what I have to look forward to because I think that Mina is a lot like him, a bundle of energy.
Brianna on the other hand is going on eight. Having a few issues with worrying. I feel so bad because she worries about these things that stress adults out. She worries about her heart stopping, something infecting her brain, things like that. They need to keep her away from the learning channel. She is too smart for her own good.
After pleading for a few hours Brianna finally got us to sit around and play the board game Life. We played and it was fun. She is so much smarter than the average seven year old. I still think of her as this little baby I used to take care of everyday. She was always a good baby, quiet. Not like my crazy daughter who likes to scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason.
We'll see what tomorrow holds for us. It will be different than today because it was only Nick, but Brianna is off from school so there are going to be three crazy kids running around all day. (and no Mina still isn't walking yet)
Monday April 14, 2003 [11:53am]
I swear I am not making these words up! At the end of each Blues Clues episode Joe and Dora come on to say Thank Yoy and Gracias. Then he says Good bye and she says Adios. I swear Mina said it. She said Adios. In her own way of course. To make sure I said it twice and she repeated it each time. The words are coming!!!
[2:11am]
We had an awesome day today. Mina got to spread herself out on grass for the first time. At first she would just pass her hand across it, of course that was until she realized that she could pull it out and eat it. She tried crawling across but did so like she was a cat in water. For the most part she sat in my lap pulling out strands of grass. Of course I did not let her eat it!
It was Prospect Park we went to. I loved it. It was warm, beautiful and there were kids everywhere. Mina's eye would catch a beautiful babe and she would say, "Bay bu." Of course first I would say to her, "Say hi to the baby." My girl is talking!
We went into the park, where there were no swings available. That never happens in the park here in JC. Our park is always a ghost town. I hate it. Anyhow since they had they baby slides I decided to take her down one for the first time. She loved it. She squealed everytime we slid down. I only did it a few times because we were sliding down so fast I kept trying to use my hand to slow down and got a burn across my wrist.
But tomorrow, if the sun is shining the way it was today we are going to our Ghost town park and sliding down the slide.
I'm glad I'm not a kid anymore. If I were I wouldn't be able to enjoying watching her excitment everytime she gets to experience something new.
Without a doubt being a mom is the best thing I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing it my life. I believe whole heartedly that I was mean to be a mom. Struggles or no, this is my purpose.
Friday April 11, 2003 [1:57pm]
I thought my kid was going to be a picky eater. She recently would want to eat only a few bites of food and then get tight lipped on me. And this is after she would chow on anything you set in front of her. But I think she is back to her old self. The past few days she has been eating zelotly. No more picky eating!!
April 9, 2003 [4:12pm]
She's happy and she knows it! I played that song for her a few minutes ago and everytime they said if you are happy and you know it clap your hands she clapped. Between that and the Arthur hey thing I am amazed. How did my baby get so grown?
I feel bad though, she has been very cranky and I think she has more teeth coming up. She would just burst into tears for no reason. She cried for ten minutes straight in my arms and nothing I would do for her helped. Well almost nothing... I played the bluses clues song.
April 6, 2003 [2:01pm]
David and I have the most wonderful daughter in the whole wide world. No one else's kid can compare.
She was very sweet this weekend. She just might be over her fear of men. Her uncle Christian came to visit this weekend and after about an hour or so she warmed up to him and even allowed for him to pick her up and play with her. He did scare her a little bit when she woke up in the morning and crawled out into the living room looking for Papa and met with Christian. She screaming her head off and came back to me. But after her dad called her she went back out. She's a tough little gal.
The boys went out last night so when they came home they passed out in the living room tired. She woke up during the night, fussing, tossing and turning, so I didn't get must sleep. Especially since I went to bed real late. In the morning as we all laid passed out she crawled around on the bed, playing with the toys and books that I gave her. She would crawl down off the bed and go to visit her dad, come back to me. But for the most part she played by herself. She got into no trouble. I dozed off and on, played with her a bit but for the most part she was on her own and she did great. Didn't get into any mischief. What more could I ask for? She is a good girl, she let mama, papa and ojichan sleep in.
April 4, 2003 [9:41pm]
Bedtimes are meant to be kept. She goes to bed late as it is. 9pm. She gets so tired and cranky by 8:00pm that it seems cruel to me to keep her up past that. I am not trying to be a mean mom but I want to be consistent with her care. I screw up other things so at least that has to be constant.
Less than one month to go and she will a year old. I can't believe it. We have had her almost a year. She has been the light of my life. The one thing that makes my life have a actual purpose. Now I stuggle to become a better person just for her. I knew parenthood would change me but I never knew it would be like this. I can't only hope that I will be able to do right by her. I am looking forward to the next year, and the next and the next.
Today she decided to bite the crap out of me. She bites my cheek, my arms, my belly if you can believe that. Now that she has six teeth she want to use them all the time. Four on the top, two on the bottom. So far she has a gap between her teeth just like me. But I am guessing that is normal for babies because they don't have surrounding teeth. As a joke she likes to nip me on the boob. That's not funny, but she laughs her head off. I ain't laughing.
She now has quite a vocabulary. She says blue... well bru. She loves her blues clues. I don't know what it is about that blue dog but she thinks it is the bomb. Helps me when I need to take a shower. Snap her into her swing or put her in her walker and I am off to take a shower for 22 minutes. Blues clues is my God send.