At the last minute I decided that I should take Sadie trick-or-treating tonight. She caught on to the concept pretty quickly and enjoyed going up to the doors with the older kids in the neighborhood. And although she thought that the candy was pretty neat, her favorite houses were the ones with kids or pets. She terrorized our bishop's dog and crawled right into my neighbors house and sat down on the floor next to her baby.
When we got home she emptied her whole bag and carried around as much candy as would fit into her little hands at once and she wouldn't let me near her even to get a picture. (Smart girl, she knows I was really after the Reese's). And she cried when we put the candy away.
Overall it was a super fun night. Happy Halloween (again).
When searching for inspiration for this year's Halloween costumes I couldn't help but notice how often I have posted on this blog about what a monkey Sadie is (see here, here, here and here) and I realized I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make her a real monkey costume.
Ryan and I, of course, are the zoo keepers. I specialize in primate training while Ryan handles waste management (yeah, I have an awesome husband).
Today was the first snowfall of the winter. Sadie and I are trying super hard to avoid despair (we like to play outside in the warm weather) or the overwhelming desire to hole up and hibernate so we bundled up in our winter coats and went outside to play in the snow. Unfortunately, by the time we got outside it was mostly melted. I couldn't help but laugh at Sadie's coat though. It easily doubles her size. For some reason I started singing "Umpa, Umpa, Umpitydoo..."
On a whim I entered Sadie into a cute baby contest that The Gap is sponsoring. The winner will be featured in the store windows of babyGap and GapKids in February 2010, which would be kinda fun. It also doesn't hurt that the winners will receive tickets to THE LION KING in either New York or Las Vegas.
Here is how it works: A panel of judges will narrow down all of the entries received to 20 finalists (five baby boys, five baby girls, five boys, and five girls). Those finalists will have a professional Gap photo shoot and the public can vote on those pics until December 21, 2009. The four children who receive the most votes (one from each of the categories) will be announced as the winners on February 1, 2010. I realize that the chances of Sadie winning are about 0.0002% but it is kinda fun to participate anyway.
They are also having a Fan Favorite contest which you can vote (click here, here and here) on until November 17. If you think Sadie is cute, or if you can tell from the dark circles under my eyes that I could really use a trip to Jamaica, you could go vote for her. The annoying news is that in order to vote you have to register your email address at disneyfamily.com, supposedly to maintain the integrity of the contest voting process but more likely so that Disney can send you junk mail every day. Any whoo, you can vote once per entry per day per person/valid e-mail address. Sadie only needs about 34,000 more votes to win!
Does entering my kid into a beauty contest mean that am I becoming one of those crazy parents? If you see me throwing a temper tantrum at your kid's soccer game next spring you will know I slipped down the slippery slope.
Sadie has cut 2 new teeth over the last couple of weeks and they have caused her quite a bit more pain than her first 4 teeth. One of the most noticeable side affects of the teeth coming through is a constant runny nose. To try to make her more comfortable, and, in turn save my sanity, I have been dosing her with IBProfen and Benedryl at night. I realized I may have a problem when I saw Sadie walking around the house sucking on medicine droppers. I became a little more concerned when Sadie brought me the bottle of IBProfen and cried until I gave her a dose. When she tried to chug the bottle of Benedryl I decided it was time for an intervention .
At night we follow a bedtime routine with Sadie. It begins with a bath and ends with prayers. Sadie really enjoys this time of the night. She loves splashing the water in her bath. She loves pointing out things in her story book. She loves wrestling with her dad. But it always seemed she just tolerated prayers.
Prayers are the start of rocking chair time and the end of playtime. I hold her on my lap and cross her arms. Ryan sits in front of us and folds his arms too and then one of us begins the prayer. Sadie sits verily reverently and listens to what we are saying with a random squeal here or there, the longer the prayer the more fidgety she gets.
Yesterday we charted new territory by trusting her to sit in the rocking chair all by herself.
Ryan folded his arms. I folded my arms.
Sadie looked at Ryan. Sadie looked at me.
And then she folded her arms all by herself! She smiled her big "look at me, I am so proud of myself smile." It was definitely a heart-melt moment. And it looks like the arm folding is here to stay because she did it again tonight. It is very fun to see how fast she is learning so many new things.
A couple of months ago I blogged that Sadie had taken her first steps and that I would take pics and post all about her new skill. And then, blog blackout, radio silence. If you were waiting with baited breath you were probably sorely disappointed. Before you go karate kid on me for not being the good blogger or parent I should be, let me state my case:
It is true that Sadie took her first steps more than 2 months ago. What you don't know is that after she took those first 5 or 6 steps she was like totally over it. If she could talk she would have been all, "Mom, walking is totally old news." And since crawling was like sooo the thing to be doing (or maybe it was just way easier and way faster or way less scary) she continued crawling everywhere she went for a couple more months. We tried to encourage her by holding her hands or calling out to her. I admit it. I even tried to bribe her. Nope. She wanted NOTHING to do with walking.
However, she has had a change of heart over the past few days and has decided that walking isn't that bad. In fact, today she walked more than she crawled and threw a tantrum if I tried to carry her or hold her hand. (more on this tantrum thing later) She is still pretty wobbly, swaying like a drunk, but she is the cutest little drunk I've ever seen!
(don't mind the crazy mom voice in the video...in fact, it might be best if you just turn your speakers off for this one) But without further ado, Sadie is walking!
I vividly remember the day that my mom took me to buy my very first bra. I was mortified. Ever since then I have believed that my bosoms were not so much a buddy of mine. And then I started breast feeding…
I don’t really have too much to say except this:
The other day I was running on the treadmill at the gym and the guy next to me seemed to grow increasing uncomfortable the longer he was next to me. I acted like I was wiping the sweat off my brow with my arm to discreetly sniff to see if it was my scent that was turning him off. I smelled as sweet as a flower. I couldn’t figure out what else might be wrong with me, and, frankly, I was starting to get a bit offended that I was so offensive to him. That is when I noticed that I was holding my chest tightly with my hands while I ran. Ok, a little inappropriate for the gym, I admit it, but what is a girl suppose to do? I am lugging a gallon of milk along with me!
Pre-nursing my clothes never fit right. If it fit my waist, my cleavage played peek-a-boo out the top. If the top was appropriately modest, the waist made me look fat. And that was before the baby! When I got home from the hospital (a.k.a. when I was in full milking mode) I tried to put on a button up shirt. By the time I had tried to squeeze all of the buttons closed my chest was touching my chin. Now THAT is a double chin.
You know when you sign up for a new membership on some website, say WebMD for example, you go through the whole sign up process to sign up for just that one website or just that one weekly email. But you have to be very careful to look for all of the pre-checked boxes or else you are not only signing up for WebMD but also diabetes monthly email, men’s prostate health daily thought AND weight loss weekly tips. Well, somehow I missed the checked boxes when I signed up for my extra x chromosome. Having breasts signed up for all night time baby duty regardless of if it was a feeding or not. Apparently changing diapers also requires having breasts, but I am not quite sure why. And I am still trying to figure out why, when the baby decides that 5am on a Saturday morning is the perfect time to wake up, that only people with breasts can hear them.
I was excited to start the weaning process and put all of this behind me. I was even more excited when I got on the scale after a week of not nursing and discovered I had lost 10 pounds. 10 pounds! And then I looked in the mirror. All 10 pounds came straight from my bust, which I am now going to have to strap back into place with this
When we got home she emptied her whole bag and carried around as much candy as would fit into her little hands at once and she wouldn't let me near her even to get a picture. (Smart girl, she knows I was really after the Reese's). And she cried when we put the candy away.
Today was the first snowfall of the winter. Sadie and I are trying super hard to avoid despair (we like to play outside in the warm weather) or the overwhelming desire to hole up and hibernate so we bundled up in our winter coats and went outside to play in the snow. Unfortunately, by the time we got outside it was mostly melted. I couldn't help but laugh at Sadie's coat though. It easily doubles her size. For some reason I started singing "Umpa, Umpa, Umpity doo..."
…or maybe duct tape.
