The Unsurly

we're alive ...

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:48:00 +0000

... I just don't have a lot of time on the computer these days. :)

Back after the holidays with pictures and details about life with two!

Audrey Jane is here!

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Audrey Jane
born 12/7/2009
5:01 p.m.
7 pounds 9 ounces
18 3/4"

Pictures and more details to come!

new teeth

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:46:00 +0000

Olivia had her big dentist appointment today. I almost cancelled it at the last minute, because the pediatric dentist's policy is not to allow parents in the back while they're doing lengthy treatments and I thought it would be way too traumatic for Olivia. I'd been dreading it for weeks.

As it turned out, it was mostly traumatic --- for me. She said "mama!" a couple of times when the dental assistant came out to get her, and apparently cried for a couple of minutes, but then settled down and was a total trooper for the rest of her appointment (which lasted almost 2 hours). They cleaned her teeth, applied a sealant, and then covered the teeth with plastic veneers to protect them from decay and make them look more like her teeth did pre-ceramic tile accident.

The dentist and her assistants talked about ice cream a lot during the appointment, and Olivia's reaction was always, "mmmm!" or "num num!" each time they mentioned it. (They gave us a coupon for a free ice cream cup at Chik-Fil-A that we redeemed on the way home.) She also apparently told them that we already had our Christmas tree up and that the lights were blue. She may have been thinking about helping me put up the outdoor lights over the weekend, though who knows!

They gave her a stuffed bear wearing an "I love my dentist" shirt, and she carried it around for most of the day. The only thing she says about her appointment is that the dentist looked at her teeth and that they're clean and shiny. So ... lifetime trauma averted, I think.

Before:

After:

seriously slacking - 36 weeks

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:18:00 +0000

I'm 36 weeks pregnant today, which means 4 weeks left (if I'm lucky). I alternate between wanting to get it over with already and wanting to keep this kid in forever so nothing changes. I've become accustomed to not being able to bend over and breathe at the same time, to the unpredictable, sharp stabbing pains that occasionally shoot from my back to my hip down my leg, causing me to suddenly lurch forward like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. This random pain doesn't care if I'm at home, trying to carry a 25-pound toddler up the stairs, or merely strolling around at Target minding my own business.

What I'm no longer accustomed to is an hour of straight sleep being considered a luxury. All the various discomforts of recovering from a 40-week gestational process in which a human being ... you know, comes out of your body. The profuse sweating that ensues upon hearing a tiny little baby screaming and screaming for no reason. Thinking that your breast pump talks to you.

These days, I wake up around 3am with a strange desire to go downstairs and vacuum the kitchen floor. I often worry about how we're going to permanently ruin Olivia's life and how she's still just a baby and needs our attention.

But I'm sure that just like I did with Olivia, I'll muddle through somehow. I'll get used to not sleeping again, though hopefully it won't be a year-long stretch this time around. I'll wear the dark undereye circles as badges of honor. If nothing else, maybe people will take pity and come over bearing coffee.

miscellaneous cuteness

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:16:00 +0000

Just jotting these down so I don't forget:

"I hear wick-wick!" (music)

da-der-roo = kangaroo

makey da play-doh (makey da brown rabbit, makey da chicken eggs, makey da pink OE)

bite of water

_______ very tasty! (most recently, I was in the shower and heard her saying, "Mmm! Ice cream cone very tasty! Num num!" When I peeked around the shower curtain, I saw her with a (closed) jar of Mentholatum in her mouth. Ack.)

soooooo many birds!

daddy pick it up now

21 months old: first time out

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:32:00 +0000

I need to start by saying that Olivia is officially 21 months old as of 11/7! I missed taking pictures last weekend, even. Along those lines, I can sort of tell that she's inching closer to being 2 years old these days. Case in point:

She had her very first (and surely not even close to the last) time out on Monday. I gave her a bowl of mac and cheese with a few peas mixed in -- this girl has GOT to learn to eat veggies! -- and after a few bites, she promptly started throwing her food everywhere: against the garage door, into her play area in the dining room, and even managed to get some from the dining room into the kitchen. I asked her to stop, I counted to three ... and she kept doing it. And laughing. And then smacked my hands away when I tried to remove the bowl of offending food. Yeah, Mommy don't play that.

I told her she was going to have a time out because we don't throw our food and it's bad manners. I turned her booster chair facing the door, set the microwave timer for a minute, and waited.

There was an acknowledgement of the wrongdoing: "Noooooooo throwing food. Noooooo."

Then the anger phase set in: "DOWN NOW! DOWN! NOW!" she screamed in a voice that sounded straight out of a scene from The Exorcist.

And finally, our first spousal disagreement about discipline. He thought I was being too hard on her and that she didn't know why she was in time out. I told him 1 minute in a chair wasn't going to kill her, and besides, maybe it was ME who needed a time out.

Halloween photos

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:20:00 +0000

always an adventure

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:45:00 +0000

We took Olivia along with us while we went shopping for a new bed. She was trying very hard to be patient and doing a good job of it for a 20-month-old, but was starting to come a bit unwound: it was close to dinner time, she'd been in her stroller for a while, and she hadn't napped that day. Yeah, our bad for even attempting a shopping excursion on a day like that.

We let her out of the stroller to run around a bit, but there's really only so much you can do to keep a toddler from climbing on all the furniture (with sticky fingers, of course) or smearing all the glass coffee tables, so we had to pick her up and hold her. The furniture salesperson sees me trying to hold my super-wiggly child and comes over to chat. It went a little something like this:

saleswoman: Hi, Olivia! What are you doing?

Olivia [ramming finger up nose and grinning]: I PICKING MY NOSE!!!

In true Olivia style, this was said at top volume, and I don't doubt that most of the store heard her jubilant exclamation. Several people nearby chortled; one customer walking past our area stopped and bent over at the waist laughing. Yep, that's my kid!

fall fun

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:11:00 +0000

pictures

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Saying cheese (you can kind of see the chipped tooth here):

10/7/2009, 20 months old:

Her first attempt at sitting in her "OE big girl chair." The high chair, constantly in our way and the cause of a million stubbed toes, has been banished to the basement.

Who is this big girl?

20 months old (two days late)

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:48:00 +0000

Olivia is 20 months old! She was a dainty 24 pounds 4 ounces (40th percentile) for weight at her well-baby checkup this week, and half an inch shy of three feet tall -- 35.5" (98th percentile). I bought her some Old Navy jeans in 18-24 month size, and they fall right off. It's no wonder: they're meant for kids 33-36" tall, but also 27-34 pounds.

I have cute photos to post, but Blogger isn't cooperating. More to come ...

hip-hop baby

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:04:00 +0000

In an effort to wean her from the need to listen to Baby Signing Time songs (disclaimer: LOVE BST -- those DVDs are seriously fabulous!) in the car, I started a rotation of songs I could tolerate. Of those, Olivia has latched on to two that she wants to hear constantly:

"Single Ladies" -- Beyonce (surely you've seen the "Single Babies" viral video on YouTube ...)

"Gold Digger" -- Originally Kanye West's, but Olivia prefers the version from Glee instead.

So now instead of hearing the plaintive wails of "Baby Time? Peeeese? Baby Time NOW!" I'm treated to requests/commands to hear "Dingle Lay-Lees? DINGLE LAY-LEEEEEEEEEEEES!" or "Goh Diggle!" from my little backseat DJ.

tooth trauma

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:31:00 +0000

It's taken me nearly a week to recover from *my* trauma enough to finally post about it.

On Sunday evening, right after dinner, I got Olivia out of her high chair and was right behind her when she fell. It happened so quickly that I didn't have time to reach out and catch her (oh, the guilt!) and she didn't have time to try to catch herself with her hands. Face met ceramic tile. There was the telltale moment of silence where you know that either they're totally fine or screaming is about to ensue in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Ah yes, there it is.

I picked her up and she was holding her mouth. When she moved her hand, I saw the blood. A lot of it. At that point, I was doing a decent job of remaining calm when I noticed something white on her lip. A piece of her tooth. Her front tooth.

Hello freakout.

The pediatric dentist she saw once for her checkup was out of town for a week, so I called their emergency backup dentist from a different practice. I think the call went something like:

surly: Hi, Dr. Phillips. My daughter is a patient of Dr. Carol's, but she's out of town. A few minutes ago she ... she [voice shaking] fell ... on the tile [embarrasing crying begins]

dentist: Oh, please don't cry! It's ok. Can you tell me what happened?

surly: [crying worse from hearing sympathetic voice on phone] Her tooth! [deep breath to attempt to compose self]

I believe I said something about being pregnant/hormonal/crazy and told her I was going to put my husband on the phone. Look up "calm under pressure" in an encyclopedia and you'll see my photo, folks.

Long story short, we took her in the next day. X-rays showed that the roots seem to be fine, but she has a 2nd-degree fracture of one front tooth, exposing the pulp, and chipped the enamel off the other front tooth. We go back in 6 weeks to have her rechecked and discuss possible restoration of the tooth so she doesn't get cavities. I just assumed they'd pull a baby tooth, but apparently they like them to stay in as long as possible to serve as a placeholder for the adult teeth.

She's a trooper and really hasn't complained at all about it, other than when she whacked her face with her baby doll and caused the bleeding to start up again right after we'd gotten it under control the first time. I haven't been able to get a pic of the snaggletooth yet, but will of course keep trying.

scary things

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:57:00 +0000

There must be a lot to be afraid of when you're 19 months old. Olivia continues to proclaim lots of things to be scary ("Oooooh, that's-a scarrrrrreeeeee!). Among them:

* a purple and green polka dot elephant toy. We should probably just put it away, because it apparently haunts her toybox and she hates when we even open the lid.

* having her diaper changed when the changing pad cover is in the wash. Tears and everything.

* green beans. She'll eat the pureed stuff (yuck), but put a whole one on her tray? Terrifying!

* putting toys away. We asked her to put her toys away before bed. Her reply? "No toys away. That's-a scarrrrreeee!"

I think she might be playing us.

19 months old!

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:48:00 +0000

Our big girl! These are from earlier in the weekend on my birthday and today. Truly, how did she get to be so big?

mid wave

hamming it up during dinner

She met some new friends at the park today: Oggie, aka Audrey, and Ah-duh-wan, aka Allison. They liked her bucket and shovel, and she shared graciously (as graciously as a toddler can share, anyway). Ah-duh-wan set a bad example by shoveling handfuls of pebbles into her mouth; Olivia attempted to follow suit but only briefly sucked on a pinecone instead.

I keep meaning to post something separate about Baby #2, but always end up forgetting. So, an update: I'm 26 weeks today. Baby is a girl, healthy as far as all the available Testing for Very Elderly Pregnant Ladies can tell (triple screen, level 2 ultrasound) and is so far without a name. I'm in serious denial that she'll be here before the end of the year, which will also cut about 15 days from my usual "only X shopping days until Christmas" panic.

I also have some serious guilt already about how I'm surely ruining Olivia's life as she knows it ... and mine. She finally sleeps through the night after a miserably long year of little sleep and then we go and do this? I just keep reminding myself that I have a sister who I adore and can't imagine life without, and any therapy I've needed in my lifetime has had nothing to do with her. ;)

words and phrases

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:49:00 +0000

I wanted to jot these down while I was thinking of them. Her vocabulary is changing every day -- it's wild how one day she pronounces something one way, and the next morning she can actually say the word. This age is so much fun. :)

uppy-down = upside down

ba-ba-boo = peek-a-boo, said in a really high-pitched voice

uht = elephant (this one is extra funny to me, because she says iguana and lawnmower and other words just fine)

ah-deh-poos = octopus. Probably my my favorite word of hers right now.

She used to say bagel in the cutest way: bab-eeeel, sort of with a French accent. Now she just says bagel.

OK is still ah-dey.

airplane recently went from meh-mayne to ah-plenne.

She just looked at the squirrel hanging off the birdfeeder and yelled, "Get down, squirrel!" And this morning when I asked her if she remembered her new schoolbus toy we bought her yesterday, she said, "Ohhhhhhhhhh! New kool-bus! Et, daddy!" (Et is how she says thanks; she always accompanies it with the baby sign.)

She likes to look at ants on the ground, but doesn't touch and instead looks at me seriously and says, "Ants alone!" When I reply that yes, it's nice to leave ants alone, she follows that up with "Bees alone!" Oh yeah. Not going to argue her on that one at all. The less bug touching, the better.

If I tell her that we're going somewhere in the car, she replies, "Mama Starbucks!" I don't know whether to be embarrassed, proud, or both. She's already succumb to the branding, I guess.

In an attempt to wean her from having to constantly hear Baby Signing Time songs in the car (while fabulous, and I'd recommend the DVDs to anyone, I started to feel like if I heard those songs one more time, blood might gush from my ears), we began hyping up music we like by exuberantly saying "yeah," "uhh!" and "woo hoo" during those songs. Now she does it unprompted -- and let me tell you, listening to your 18-month-old uh-huh and yeah along to a Jay-Z song makes the heart proud. :P

catching up

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:38:00 +0000

I've been sick for over a week with a cold and have been EXTRA slacky about updating lately. On the plus side, freelance work is picking back up and I passed all the testing and training to become a kgb_ agent, so I've been really busy on top of the my normal pregnant mom chasing a toddler tiredness. :P

Just a few quick things while I feed her breakfast of dah-doze (Cheerios) and dix (Kix).

-- she had her first haircut a couple of weeks ago to remove her glorious rat tail. I thought I might cry, but the crying was all her. She did not enjoy it one bit. They gave me the little tail to take home in a tiny ziploc. Bye-bye, mullet!

-- we went to the zoo the other day, and she's still talking about the animals she saw. She seems to have been most impressed by the polar bear, who she says played peek-a-boo with her.

Olivia-isms that are cracking us up lately:

-- when something scares her, she turns into a guy from a Prego commercial, doing her best Italian accent: "Oooooh, that's-a scaaaarrryyyy!"

-- she has a little ram toy that she calls "I the ram." She asks us what I the ram says, and also puts her Diego figure on top of him and says "Diego riding the ram!" I think I the ram came from me singing "I'm the ram" to the tune of "I'm the map" from Dora. She loves her little people animal set and knows all of the animals, even the iguana (eye-na-na), jaguar, vulture, zebra, and she knows the difference between the rhino and the hippo, both of which look pretty similar to me! While I think her pronunciation is really good for a toddler her age (almost 19 months), she calls and elephant an "ut."

I'm sure there's more, but Miss O, or O.E., as she still calls herself, demands to get down and play. Off we go!

one toddler, two days, zero naps.

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:18:00 +0000

We just got home from a quick overnight trip to Lexington to visit our cousins and their two girls. The trip was great (thank you, portable DVD player!), but our timing was a little off -- we arrived Saturday around naptime and were silly enough to think that she'd go down for her nap in a new house with new playmates and two very exciting dogs. I put her in her pack n' play and went in about 10 minutes later to find that she'd reached the package of wipes on the dresser and filled the PNP with over half of them. I gave up trying to force a nap at that point.

We left before noon today, thinking she might sleep in the car. Again, silly us! We got home at 3:00 and by 5pm, poor Olivia was a mess. Yawning, rubbing her eyes, crying at everything, pulling her hair. I picked her up to console her and she was conked out on my shoulder within 20 seconds. It's going to make for a long night for us, but she's in her crib sleeping right now. It seemed mean and entirely unpleasant for all to try to keep her up until her usual 7pm bedtime.

Maybe she'll be so tired from two days of no napping that she'll sleep through the night? Ha!

18 months old

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:37:00 +0000

She's a year and a half old! Unbelievable. I look at her baby pictures and then at her, and it's amazing to me that she's grown into such a little person so quickly.

On 8/7/2009:

And what she does when you ask her to make her "silly face." This expression is also combined with a funny "Ooooooooooooh!" sound for maximum comedic effect. She's a little ham -- wonder where she gets it.

stack 'em up!

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:45:00 +0000

Olivia learned a new trick -- stacking up little containers of Parkay -- in a restaurant in North Carolina.

uploading ...

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:51:00 +0000

Hi everybody! My mom has been a total slacker and still hasn't uploaded photos from our beach vacation. She promised she's going to work on it this weekend, so stay tuned!

back from the beach

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:30:00 +0000

Just a quick post to say that we survived a 14-hour drive to North Carolina and back with a rear-facing toddler in tow.

Olivia had a blast at the beach -- she loved the sand, the ocean, and especially having a built-in adoring audience of Grammy, Grampy, Auntie Rar-Rah and Uncle Na-Na around the clock.

I haven't had a chance to upload photos yet, as I'm still unpacking bags and vacuuming up the sand that seems to be everywhere, but I'll do it soon. My big ultrasound is today at 2 p.m., so I'll try to get those photos scanned and uploaded later as well.

More to come!

17 months old

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:36:00 +0000

I can't believe how grown up Olivia is! Over a year and a half old now ... it's so hard to remember her as a tiny, helpless baby now that she has such a developed personality.

She learns something new every day, and she never fails to make me laugh. That's not to say that she's not a handful at times: I'll go ahead and confess to crying out of frustration at dinner last night after she flung the scrambled egg I made for her on the floor and then at me. The kid just won't eat unless it's yogurt/crackers/ some fruit or her new favorite Veggie Booty ("ba-booey").

She's still obsessed with her owies and points them out (though they've long healed) to me and anyone else who will listen several times a day:

O: mama! Owwwwwies.
me: you have an owie?
O: hurt!
me: where does it hurt?
O: leg.
me: oh, your leg?
O: knee!
me: and your knee?
O: eye too!
me: your eye too?
O: Ohhhhhh noooooooo, owies!

Her BFF is our cat Antoy, or Duh-Doy as she likes to call her. We never imagined Antoy could be so patient. She was far from a fan of babies/kids before (and for a while after) Olivia arrived, but now she'll sit and let her try to touch her nose, "pet" her using her toys, and have various foods and sippy cups shoved in her face. I did see Antoy give her a little swat on the head last week -- Antoy was on the bed and Olivia was bothering her nonstop: "Hi Duh-Doy! Duh-Doy, EAT! Hi Duh-Doy! Duh-Doy tail!" O turned the other way for a second and Antoy reached out and gave her a little pat, no claws. Just enough to say, "Lady, it's time to get this 3-foot beast out of my face for a bit." Olivia also loves Nugget/Nuh-Nut, but Nuh-Nut is not really a fan. She pretty much hides during her waking hours.

Since I filmed her counting to 10 video, she's improved -- she can say all the numbers, but skips 7. She still loves to spell her name, and likes watching us write words and draw pictures on her magna doodle.

catching up

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:16:00 +0000

Olivia had her first dentist visit this past week. She cried (not a shocker), but seemed to get over the trauma fairly quickly, especially once the dentist gave her a rubber duck. The best part was that she doesn't have any cavities despite her nighttime bottle habit going on a bit too long.

She likes to say her name now, which she pronounces "oh-eeeeee." I find it adorable.

She continues to pick up new words every day, and some of her existing words are morphing into better versions: Elmo has changed from Mo to Mel-Mo, and Dora was Dee but is now Dorrrr-ah. And she's continuing to try out sentences. This morning she said, "Oh nooooo! Baby all wet!"

She's not loving restaurant dining these days -- just ask my family after a particularly feisty experience at PF Chang's this weekend -- but is otherwise a pretty funny, happy kid. I think we'll keep her.

a quick cute thing

noreply@blogger.com (surly) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:38:00 +0000

Olivia has the cutest new thing she's doing lately. When she wants something, she'll say this:

"mooooore nana? ah-dey!" translation: more banana? ok!

It's like she's asking and answering her own question. Hilarious.

She's also been known to say "More ba-booey (Veggie Booty, her new fave snack)? Ah-dey!" and "Baby (Baby Signing Time, either the songs in the car or the DVD)? Ah-dey!"