25 reasons why I am thankful

Being a new parents changes your perspective of things and for that reason I decided to make a list of things I am thankful for now that I am a parent.

wobbly head at 2 months

1. I have been able to see Natallie progress through each milestone. Cheering for her when she held up her wobbly head for 2 seconds, the first time she rolled over intentionally, the months she did the worm crawl, the months I chased after her crawling for real and now chasing a little girl wobbling walking all around the house

2. Natallie is past the newborn stage with its prolonged crying and most thankful for being past the stage of cleaning poo from armpits

 

3. Natallie is now sleeping thru the night and I don't have to sleep in one hour increments and rock her to sleep until my arms seized up

yea sleeping 11 hours a night!

                                
4. I have a new perspective that waking up a minute past 7:30am is sleeping in

5.God bless Tylonel for teething, cranky babies

6.Our laundry machine hasn't broken down eventhough for 6 months we were running it every day

7. My arms are so much stronger and defined now than before

8. I can do almost any household chore w one hand and natallie on my hip (although washing a pot w one hand leaves the pot still dirty and Natallie all wet)

9. Natallie will let me and even likes brushing her teeth now! I just need to line up her Teddy bears and brush thier mouth reigions too (bc teddys do not have teeth, that would be freaky)

no more screaming when I put the toothbrush in her mouth

10. I am only nursing morning and night now so I can wear any outfit in my closet again. I don't have to choose my shirt based in how easily I can pop my boob out

I get to wear a T-shirt again, totally impractical for nursing but don't need to worry about that anymore

11. I dont have to pack the nursing cape and attempt to feed in public anymore. Natallie hated it and would cry and scream under the cape and bat it away

12. Natallie is past the age of crib bumpers being a SIDS concern and I can put them on her crib bc they are so cute

farm-themed crib bumper and matching quilt, so cute!

13. Natallie has got tons of cute hand me downs and clothes from grandma it's so fun to dress up my baby doll everyday

                               
14. Natallie will sit on the bathroom counter and let me brush her hair and out pretty bows in it every morning (oh and thankful she has lots of beautiful brown curly hair!)
                                            
15. Simon does bath time w Natallie everynight and I can hear the giggles from downstairs

16. Despite few accidents (eg.) no permanent damage was done (at least nothing that we know of at this point)


bruised and scraped after falling headfirst out of the stroller but OK

17. Craigslist & baby swap meets (super cheap baby stuff, yes please!)

18. Natallie lets me cuddle her and now knows how to kiss (which at this stage is a wide open mouth )

19. Never took bottle so don't have to figure out how to get her off the bottle

 

20. My best friends all had babies in the same year so our babies can grow up together


Natallie at the pumpkin patch with her baby besties

Natallie with her best friends on her 1st birthday

21. Despite all the food crumbs, puke and poop that our carpet has endured, our carpet isn't molding yet

22. Natallie has learned baby sign and it is decreasing the amount of crying & whining

 

23. My mom's willingness to babysit so I can still work a little bit

24.We have adapted to life w a walking 3 foot tornado and accepted that our house will never look quite as neat as it used to

Little Ms. Trouble reorganizing our tupperware drawer

                                 

25. That we have a beautiful, active and inquisitive baby girl with a smile that makes random strangers smile and melts my heart every time! I am so thankful I get to be a parent and to have a wonderful, supportive husband to figure it all out with.

 

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Natallie's room

 When we first found out we were pregnant, Simon was probably dreaming of the day Natallie would be old enough to go snowboarding with him and land backflips with him but I was thinking about the cute outfits Natallie would wear and also what the nursery would look like. I briefly looked at pictures on Pintrest and it was a bit overwhelming to see how spectacular some baby rooms were. Then later, reading in celebrity magazines the ridiculous amount of money that people spend on their nursery room is insane. I started lusting over the matching bedsheets and crib bumpers (although crib bumpers are apparently totally evil and definitively cause SIDS). I wanted just the perfect crib and it just needed to match the changing table. I am so happy with Natallie's room now and pretty proud that we kept the cost pretty low. The cute white crib was bought with the mattress off Craigslist, the white changing table was a clearance floor model from Zellars and Simon sprayed the originally black night table to match the rest of the furniture. And the wall decals are my favourite part, at first I really wanted the big huge stickers but they cost almost $100 and I knew I couldn't justify telling Simon that I spent that much on a sticker! I managed to find all the wall decals on the internet or at Winners for under $20 each. My favourite is the artwork on the wall. I really wanted to find some prints to match the owl sitting on the branch and the bird canvas print I got from Winners but I couldn't find anything that matched so I decided to make them myself. To my surprise, they actually turned out really nice!  What do you think?

I made the porcupine, the squirrel, the owl and the turtle!

And I also like the verse I have up on the wall "Every good and perfect gift is sent from above" (James 1:17) Every time I'm in there nursing Natallie or changing yet another diaper, it helps me remember to be thankful for every moment I have with my baby girl. I feel so blessed and thankful to have a beautiful girl and be able to watch her reach so many new milestones in the last year.

And I am thankful for you for sharing in the adventure of parenting with me.

                                                    Happy Thanksgiving!

tipsy pirate

A new milestone! Natallie is taking her first steps, she looks like a drunk sailor or a tipsy pirate who has had too much rum! All the moms with babies that are walking tell me that this just means a whole new level of trouble and exhaustation but I'm still optimistic that this will be fun. And I can't imagine how the house could be any more of a disaster zone than it already is so bring on my walking tipsy pirate! The best part is that Natallie knows that she is walking and is so proud, she bumbles her way across the living room with the biggest goofy grin on her face.

Do you remember when your little one took their first steps??

monkey see, monkey do!

 Ever since Natallie could get her pudgy hands on stuff, anything and everything went into her mouth. All the toys and things that weren't toys like baby wipes, outlet covers, Q-tips were bathed in Natallie's slobber. But now I've noticed that when Natallie picks something up there is more than just the this-is-good-to-chew-on category. Now when Natallie finds a hair clip or an hair elastic she picks it up and starts rubbing it in her hair. And a few months ago when she would get her shoes or socks off, she would eat them right away. I even had a random stranger stop me at the mall and tell me that it's totally unsantitary to let Natallie eat her sock (thanks random stranger, if you only knew what I let her eat at home). Anyways, now Natallie likes to go to her collection of shoes and rub them on her feet hoping they will stick on. It's hilarious watching her try to get her shoes on. I don't think it will be long until Natallie starts to put on my shoes and walks around the house, she already tries to get her foot in my Crocs! Monkey see, monkey do!



when I get dressed in the morning, she finds clothes on the floor and tries to get dressed too

she knows that glasses are supposed to stay on your face

she knows how to play foos ball but cheats a bit to get the ball in the goal

she gets Simon's keys and rubs the keys all over the front door and is a bit sad when the door doesn't open

And in the video you can see Natallie trying so, so, so hard to put the Bjorn on so she can go for a walk

And in this video, she finds a dryer sheet on the floor and starts wiping my photo! But at the end she can't resist to chew on it just a little bit!

 It's so cute that now when Natallie snatches baby wipes when I'm not looking, she first wipes down the couches and helps me with some house cleaning before shoving it in her mouth. Yay!  I need all the help I can get!

Talking hands

My good friend Kristin and I took a 6-week baby sign course several months ago, it was a lot of fun and I learned a whole bunch of signs for things that I talk about all the time like "book" and "changing diapers". I also learned some signs that I don't know if I'll ever use like "grizzly bear" or even umm...female lady parts.  (Side story about that: the teacher was teaching us to sign the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and asked if anyone could guess the sign for "diamond", I did the obvious and made a diamond shape with my thumb and index finger and apparently that's the sign for 'vagina'! oooops! Now whenever I sing that song with Natallie I have to make sure I am not signing "up above the world so high, like a vagina in the sky!)

Anyways, after modelling signs for just about everything I could remember from class, Natallie starting signing more ! (you can click on it if you want to see what the sign for 'more' looks like). I'm simplying the signs for her since she has the fine motor skills of a walrus right now so she just claps her hands like this:

This was the only sign she had for the last couple months but just in the last few weeks, she has learned several more. Natallie hates being strapped down in the highchair so when she is done her food, she starts to whine and climb out of her highchair and I relentlessly worked on her signing all done . Now when she starts whinning, I can ask, "are you all done?" and she will do this:

Isn't that wonderful?! The sign for milk is like milking the udder of a cow. Although this sign is a bit degrading and makes me feel even more like Natalle's 24-hour dairy bar, I am still pretty stoked that she can sign for milk when she wants it. However, if I don't nurse her right after she signs for milk, she resorts to lifting up my shirt and signing milk as if she was saying, "Mom! I know where you hide the good stuff! Do I really need to go get it myself now?!!"

And finally, the last sign that is really making communication fun is the sign for help. After a month or more of trying to get her pudgy little hands to make the sign, I decided to say "help me" instead and Natallie now taps her chest when she needs me to do something for her.

I love how creative she is getting with her signs. In the video you see Natallie signing for "help me" because she wanted me to help her open the shower door so she could invade Simon's privacy while he was taking a shower. Today, she wanted to go outside and play and crawled to the front door, pulled herself to a stand and starting tapping at the door and then signing "help me". So cute! It kind of reminds me of the days when my dog, Daisy, would take the leash and bring it to me and wait by the front door.

Natallie had a playdate with Naomi, a girl in the neighbourhood who is 3 months older than her and I was suprised that Naomi could actually talk! She said "Hi Nat!" and labelled the colors of the little cups they were scooping sand with. This little 17-month old would hold up the little cup and shriek "buuu!" as she held up the blue cup. 

I can't wait til Natallie is talking, that will be fun. But for now, I'm just signing as I sing "If you're happy" and being really careful to do the right sign when I sing "Twinkle Twinke Little Star"....

Another day, another disaster.

If you come to my house, you'll know that there is no shortage of baby toys here. Simon cringes when he sees what our living room has become. In fact, you can't get to one room to another without stepping over or usually, tripping over something that is large, plastic, squeaks, uses an incessant amount of batteries or is just loud and annoying (but also "educational"!) So you would think that with my large array of toys I would be able to leave Natallie alone long enough to put my contacts in, or put a load of laundry in or if I'm feeling especially optimistic, dare I say unload the dishwasher. Yet it baffles me that when I leave Natallie alone for a second, I know I'm just asking for disaster. When it's quiet, I know something is really wrong.

This morning, in the time it takes me to put Natallie's clothes back in her room, she discovers that Q-tips are not only fun to throw across the bathroom floor but also is fantastic to chew on....

Look Mom! I don't know what these things are but they are fuzzy at the end and fun to chew!

When I leave her in the living room so I can get changed, I come downstairs to find her in the kitchen conducting scientific experiments of how the amplitude of chocolate chips bounce varies depending on how forcefully one throws them across the kitchen floor

Or sometimes Natallie just decides that the entire pantry needs some reorganization and helps me get ahead start, she was probably just trying to organize the cereal alphabetically but soon realized that she doesn't know her alphabets yet. Darn.

 

And today I took Natallie's hint and tried to organize the pantry and I ended up knocking over a box of macaroni which led to extreme excitment for Natallie. My budding scientifist seized the opporunity to see how macaroni bounces on the floor differently than chocolate chips as I frantically tried to pick up all the macaroni on my hands and knees. 

 



And when I'm in a especially positive mood, I attempt to see how many dishes I can put away before Natallie notices that I am having great fun without her and she climbs in the dishwasher and tries to offer her generous assistance.

 Thank you Natallie. Without you, my life would be so uneventful. Thank you so much for keeping things interesting around here.

Hi Goat!

 

Well it's official, Natallie has been babbling for months and months but I think I can reliably say that her first word is "hi!" I was hoping it would be mama. Oh well, I guess that is understandable since she is so, so, so happy when she says "hi" and people respond. Or it doesn't even have to be a person responding to her waving and saying "hi", it could just be a big, fat goat responding to her calls.





Hi Goat!!! I am reeeeeeeeaaaallly excited to see you! Can you tell?

Hi Sheep! I know you're trying to sleep but I can't resist the urge to pull your ears!

Did you see that Mom? The sheep said Hi to me! It did! It did!

 

I tried to get a video clip of Natallie saying hi to me or Simon but she wouldn't do it ....but for Mr. Goat, she was all smiles, waving and said, "hi!" I can't believe Natallie won't say hi to me on camera but she will for the stinking goat....oh well, at least you can see for yourself...

 

Now that she is saying Hi, the race is on to see if she will say Mama or Dada now. I better win.