QOTD: 5 pm freak-out version

While Matt was trying to get her to sit on the potty:  "It's just an accident.  I don't know what my mouth is doing...there's no energy to pee.  There's no energy!"

QOTD: I thought I had more time...

I hear the sound of multiple bins full of stuff being dumped on the floor, coming from Charlotte's room, of course.

"What are you doing in there?!"

"Nothing, Mom! Nothing!"

(testing the browser on Matt's new phone.)

I really hope this is a fluke...

Charlotte does this thing where she sleeps great for a month, or maybe 6 weeks, and then she spends a week or two waking up at in the middle of the night or at 5 am, and taking forever to go back to sleep.  I'm grateful that she sleeps so well at night the majority of the time, but her disrupted nights are always timed REALLY badly.

Last night Charlotte woke up at 4:45...or at least, that's when I heard her.  I went in and put her in a dry pull-up, got her a sip of water, and rubbed her back for a few minutes.  At that point, it was pretty clear to me that she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and totally perky for waking up 3 hours early.  I went back to bed in the faint hope that she'd fall asleep easier if I wasn't there to talk to.  HA!

She finally got up at 7:30 this morning, but the time between 4:45 and 7:30 was the same as it usually is - Charlotte was in bed and talking, and I was dozing in my bed and going in there every so often to ask her to PLEASE stop kicking the wall/bouncing on the bed/laughing so loud.  On the one hand, it is awesome that she can amuse herself so thoroughly using just her imagination and her stuffed animals.  On the other hand, OMG, she needs to sleep.  Plus, *I* need to sleep, and I always have these weird dreams when I'm dozing that feel like I've been asleep for hours, when really it's just been 10 minutes.  I think Charlotte finally conked out from 6 to 7, but was up and chattering again by 7:15.  I went to bed late last night, and I think that I really did only get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night, with another 2 1/2 hours of heavily interrupted sleep.

Is it any wonder I measure my coffee consumption in pots, not cups, these days?

QOTD: Iguanodon = Goat, Brachiosaurus = Sheep

Charlotte:  Ah, Ah, A.  A is for Iguanodon.

Mama:  Well, that sounds very close.  Actually, Iguanodon starts with I.

Charlotte:  I saw Iguanodon at the zoo.

Mama:  Oh?

Charlotte:  And I fed it corn in my hand and then there was no more corn.  And then I fed a Brachiosaurus and it was too tall.  You held me in your hands and I fed the Brachiosaurus and a T. Rex.  At the zoo.

too tired to blog.

about 2 months ago

"I a big helper, Mama!"

Today we made blueberry muffins for breakfast.  From scratch.  Because Curious George was baking, and Charlotte turned to me and said, "Mama can we make a recipe?"  Even though I'll be working late tonight because I started late, I am so so so grateful that I have the flexible schedule to make muffins from scratch with my munchkin.  On a whim.  On a Monday morning.  Just because we both felt like a project.

quick things

* We are very deep into a "Buzz and Woody" phase.  Buzz tends to appear a lot in an invisible capacity, frequently climbing trees outside the window.

* Charlotte is an amazing swimmer - she's getting good at holding her breath, kicking, paddling, and "dunk myself over."

* I'm currently trying to scale way back on TV and meeting resistance.  I'm not okay with the amount of TV for the preschool members of this house, so that's just tough.

* Potty training!  1 good day, 1 bad day.  Tomorrow is a new day.

* Charlotte fed a goat at the farm while we picked up the CSA box.  She called it over to the fence by saying, "Hi, goat goat goaty goaty.  Hi little goaty goat."

* When Charlotte is sucking up to ask me a favor, she calls me "Honey Mom."  She also calls me "Mama Boy" when she's being affectionate.

Today's Doctor Visit

Sometime on Wednesday, Charlotte pinched her left index fingertip.  I'm not sure whether it was in the closet doors (bi-fold, usually blocked so she can't open them and close them) or the footstool/rocking chair (damn gliders!).  It was red on Wednesday, and on Thursday it got more and more swollen, with a little line of white next to the nailbed.  Matt was concerned on Thursday night that she might have broken it - since she could still bend it, and it only seemed to bother her when I poked it, I thought it might just be swollen.  We decided to take a look at it this morning, and then see if we could get her a doctor appointment.

It did look worse this morning, so I rushed her to the doctor's office to squeeze into the walk-in sick child office hours.  I really, really, really love our pediatric practice, Hamthrax rigmarole notwithstanding.  Dr. B took a look, and said that he thinks it is a small localized infection surrounding the injured finger, and that the white area around the nail bed is actually a pus pocket.  EWWWW.  There are really two ways to handle it.  1.  Soak it repeatedly, and the swelling should go down, and the pus will diminish.  2.  A course of antibiotics.  Or, 3. He will write a 'script for antibiotics, and if the soaking doesn't work over the next day or so, we can fill the 'script and start Charlotte on the antibiotics.  That's the option that appeals both to me and Matt, so we'll give it a try.

Also, Charlotte now weighs 34.6 pounds.  That is crazy.  She's hugemongous.

The doctor and the physicians assistant were both really impressed that Charlotte hasn't been on antibiotics before.  I admit, I'm pretty impressed with that myself - considering that I was such an antibiotic hog in my grade school/high school years with my jillion cases of strep & bronchitis, I have a lot of antibiotic-resistant-super-bug guilt.

We'll see how this goes.  Currently, soaking the injured finger is a fun activity - we'll see how patience (hers and mine) lasts as the day progresses.

ETA picture of nasty finger boo-boo

The security guard called her "Miss Hollywood"

No time to post, really, but don't like leaving such a long time between photos.  Sorry for the poor quality, copied from my facebook page since the laptop doesn't actually have storage space for new pictures.

Still Sick

We're on day...I don't even know...of this particular illness, and Charlotte and I are still coughing.  No one has puked in a few days, so that's something.  The last few days have been full of willpower battles - Charlotte really wants to get into her humidifier (damn us for picking the cute froggie one! too tempting!) and she has been sent to time out approximately 8 times in 48 hrs for being unable to stop messing with it.  We are limited by the very small number of flat surfaces in her room.  There is really only one place for it to go, and it turns out that she can reach it there.  We spent a little while running in there every few minutes to catch her touching it and then make her stop, and then put her in time out, then jury-rigged a stable platform out of her reach.  Funny thing that's come out of it is hearing Charlotte say, "humidifier froggie."

Have gotten slack in creative meals lately - there has been a little too much reliance on peanut butter & jelly and grilled cheese sandwiches.  Part of the problem is that I'm sick too, which I keep forgetting to use as an excuse to cut myself some slack.  I'm hacking up a lung here, I can't be expected to come up with fun & nutritious snacks, dammit.  It's also the time of year where finding organic fruit is harder - and Charlotte gets tired of frozen berries...and I get tired of cleaning them up.

I've also been casting around for some new projects/independent play stuff to do with Charlotte.  I have a project or two up my sleeve for tomorrow - I got some tube pasta from the store, and cut some old (very stained) onesies into fabric strips, and I'm got to see if she can thread them.  I have a big bag of pom poms, and a muffin tin, and I'll let her sort them out.  I have white glue and paint brushes and paper grass...there should be something I can do with that.  Unfortunately, a lot of this is supervised stuff, but maybe after we make some macaroni necklaces I can direct her to the dress-up box.  Maybe I can put some different stuff in there...hmm.  I seriously wish that my whole job was doing projects with Charlotte all day.  She even knows the word project, it's awesome.  As soon as she sees me gather up stuff and bring it to the kitchen table, she asks, "Dat a project, Mama?  Dat you project?"  If I tell her that I have a project for both of us, she gets even more excited.  "Oh boy, a project, yay!"  Girl after my own heart.

M-O-M-M-Y needs C-O-F-F-E-E *

Every now and then we get on this sleep thing...three days this week Matt has forgotten to set the alarm clock, and three days this week Charlotte has woken up in the wee hours of the morning and stayed awake for over an hour (almost two, usually).  It's a horrible combination.  That means that today I was up from about 3:45 to 5:30, with just a few minutes of dozing in there. And then woke up late and groggy when Matt realized that he just had time to shower and run.

I'm not so much bothered, developmentally speaking, by Charlotte waking up and staying up.  There's a couple reasons for it - she wakes up and remembers something exciting to do, or she wakes up and can't find Tigger, or she wakes up and her diaper is too full of pee for her to comfortably go back to sleep.  It's hard for her to fall back asleep once she wakes up, for whatever reason, and who can't relate to that?  Or she wakes up and is too overtired to fall back asleep, which, for her, is a big issue no matter what time it is.  It's hard for her to fall asleep at bedtime if she's overtired and she practically never naps unless she is belted into the car seat.

I understand all of this, and it doesn't bother me, per se, but god, I gotta tell you, this lack of sleep is killing me.  I was brushing my teeth this morning and berating myself for not losing weight, when I really started to think about it.  I already have very little time during the day.  I go to bed, say, 12:30 am after working until midnight, then get up about 7:30 am.  If I spend 2 of those 7 hours falling asleep, helping Charlotte fall asleep, making sure she isn't trashing her room, laying awake listening to the baby monitor trying to decide whether or not she's going to fall asleep/break something/work herself into a frenzy....well, I think I can be a little nicer to myself for not waking up at 6 am to work out.  I'll figure out something, but this is just hard right now.  As is obvious by this rambling, disjointed blog post.  Whoops.

...and then Charlotte crawls into my lap this morning and says, "I'm your best buddy, Mom!  I love you, Mom!"  It's like she's got a sixth sense about these things.


* Ralph's World song

It's been a while...

...sometimes when I have big posts brewing in my head, it's hard to actually sit down and post anything, because I want to elaborate on these big themes, but I don't have time.  So I forget to stop in and blog about the little things, the stuff I want to remember.  The other day, I was discussing with my sister about how G doesn't have any teeth yet (@ 8 months) and I knew that Charlotte got her teeth "late" but couldn't remember when.  I was able to go back and look it up, which was so freaking cool.  It was in May of 08, and she was 7 1/2 months.

Things That Charlotte Loves Right Now:

* Movies!  Cars, Cinderella, Ratatouille are the big ones, though still Curious George & Mary Poppins.

* Music - Sharon, Lois & Bram; Imagination Movers; Cars Soundtrack (natch).  She still gets a hankering for "Single Ladies", and I can sneak in Vampire Weekend and Timber Timbre w/o too much of a protest.

* Singing songs - big hits are I'm a Little Teapot, Skinnamarink & Flea, Fly, Mosquito

* Things she's into: talking about animals, particularly "What hatches from eggs?" and metamorphosis; identifying dinosaurs; playing with her cars; stacking toys/blocks; dressing up in hats & scarves & shoes; coloring at her big-girl-table

* Places/Activities she loves - going to the library! getting a snack at Trader Joe's, seeing cows, going to the playground, digging in dirt, swinging & sliding.  Going to Yankee Candle.  Splitting a muffin from Dunkin' Donuts.  Seeing family.

* Books & Stories - she likes to listen to her Chicka Chicka Boom Boom CD, discovered the "If you give a..." books, We're Going on a Leaf Hunt, any book with a cat in it, most books with dinosaurs.  She likes me to tell the story of the three little pigs & goldilocks and the three bears.

* Toys - stacking is still huge. Her various stuffed rodents are special bedtime buddies, Angelina, Suzette/Suzie and Remy.  Remy got lost at Yankee Candle, and that made a huge impression.  Now whenever she can't find him, she remembers that time he got lost and gets very upset.  Tigger is still her "best favorite buddy Tig."  Moose is still necessary for the bedtime routine.  Her Cars cars are also very much favorites, as are her Little People Animals from her A to Z playset.

* What's next? Serious potty training. Finding a daycare/preschool/babysitter.  Maybe finding a playgroup/class? She clearly wants/needs to spend time with other kids. Swapping out some toys/books.  Packing up more baby clothes. Starting our garden plot. Sitting at the dinner table. Painting w/ real paints.

Stacking

Charlotte's biggest mania right now is for stacking. It was something she started doing just around Christmas. Prior to Christmas she did a little playing with legos and some interlocking plastic pegs - she'd bring them to us and ask us to "make a stick." Around Christmas she started playing with the blocks at her grandparents house and started stacking them and saying, again, that she was "makin' a stick." We got her some blocks for Christmas, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The easiest thing to stack is her blocks.  We have crappy all-purpose-y style cheapo apartment carpet, installed over a carelessly uneven and thin pad, so we have what just might be the least stable base for stacking a vertical tower.  Charlotte has an amazing patience for it, and will stack and restack without end.  She also stacks things on horizontal surfaces - the coffee table, her toy kitchen, upside-down boxes, the corner of the kitchen table she can reach, and her closed potty.

Sometimes there is the double-whammy of OCD toddler behavior - the stacked tower and the line up of toys on the floor.  Honestly, if I didn't have as much experience with toddlers as I do, and haven't researched so much about things as I have, the stacking and lining up would make me a wee bit nervous, autism spectrum wise, but I'm pretty confident on that front.

Charlotte's favorite stacking toys, the absolute ultimate in compulsion, are the blocks from a Haba set (similar to this set, but without the car - man, she would like that car) that her Aunt H got her for her first birthday.  She's liked the set from day one, but the solid feel, stability, and the intrinsic set-ness of these blocks make them Charlotte's favorite stackers.  Literally the first thing she plays with in the morning is this set, and the last thing at night.  In fact, starting tonight, we took them out of her room at bedtime, since the last three nights she's gotten out of bed to stack them immediately behind the closed door.

The newest trick, though, is stacking food.  The geometry of the watermelon was just too much to resist on Friday.

QTOD - Quote of the Day

Charlotte, as Mater: "I want to ask you a question, but I don't know how."

Charlotte has big plans for today...

"I had a good rest! And I'm going to stack ALL DAY!"

Time for a little snore...

I've been quiet lately, but because nothing's happening. Mostly because I've been having trouble focusing on work, which means more and more of my time gets spent on work. Which means my time is split between work/Charlotte/essential chores/sleep. Leaving very little time for blogging/knitting/reading. I've been desperately renewing these library books, trying to at least finish the books I got on interlibrary loan. I mean, if I went to all that trouble to get them, I should really finish them, right? And I have two knitted Christmas presents that I'm not done with. Though that's not as bad as it seems - we just finished celebrating Christmas this past weekend.

Operation Big Girl Bed is continuing to go very well at bed times (knock on wood), but naps are a thing of the past. The misty, water-colored, well-rested past. Another result of the Big Girl Bed is that Charlotte is waking up much earlier (for her), around 7 am instead of 8 am. (I know, my 2 year old sleeps until 7 am, I'm lucky.) But as a result, I worry that she's getting just under 12 hours of sleep a day, which seems kind of low. Especially around 4 pm when she's just a mess of whining and demands. Especially around 6:30 pm when she's falling asleep into her dinner. Especially around 11 am when she's talking about "taking a little snore" and hopping around her room. It's just a cascade of Bad News most days. I desperately need the break and she desperately needs a nap. She has "Quiet Time" in her room, but that's not really relaxing for either of us. For Charlotte, Quiet Time just means a chance to play with the door closed and the lights off. For me, Quiet Time means a chance to find out what isn't toddler-proofed in her room as well as I thought it was. (How do you child proof a diaper pail? Or a wipes container?)

The one good thing about the crib was that (99.88% of the time) it kept Charlotte in one spot, and eventually she'd run out of things to do and she'd fall asleep. Or quietly chew her crib to splinters. Or stick stuff up her nose. But still, she'd be quiet. And I could get some work done, recharge, clean the kitchen, prep dinner, eat something without sharing, etc. It was a mid-day oasis. And now Nap/Quiet time has become yet another teachable moment/learning process in the middle of the day, when really, Charlotte and I both still need that break.

I know that this is all an adjustment, and that in 3 months this will have sorted itself out in some way...but coming from a place of overworked exhaustion, it's just hard to look forward. I need a break NOW.

Charlotte Can't Sleep...

Charlotte, to her toy puffin, in the rocking chair on my lap at 9:45 pm...

"How 'bout 'Teen Rabbit'?...okay, Puffin. Time to rest. Not time to play games. No games. This is serious. Time to rest. No games, Puffin. Serious. That you beak. It kinda like a beak. Serious. No games. Wrap you up. You cold, Puffin."

Matt calls her "Tiny Stalin"

Charlotte: You make a burp, Mom.

Me: No, honey, I can't make a pretend burp.

Charlotte: No, you make a BURP, Mom!

Me: Sorry, babe. I can't pretend burp.

Charlotte: I do it. *mep* Cue mees!

Me: You're excused.

Week from Crazy Train

oh. my. god.

Can I just tell you that pretty much nothing went as planned this week? I'm not gonna get into a day-by-day play-by-play, though it's tempting. I will say this, though...there were BACK TO BACK trips to the doctor's office on Thursday and Friday to have fuzz pulled out of Charlotte's nose. I don't want to talk about how we scoured her bed and got rid of everything we thought she could get stuffing from, or how the first doctor may not have looked hard enough, or how she screams, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" as she's held down by a nurse while the doctor comes at her with the long tiny tweezers.

So why am I even posting?

I'd like to whine without reliving...it's just been one of those weeks where you know you are doing everything right and everything you can, and it's still not enough. The kind of week where you feel like you were grumpy all week and allowed too much television and not enough "I love you"s. (Though I did get two of the most rare, the spontaneous "I love you, Mom"s on Monday. That was nice.) The highs and lows came so fast that I feel unbalanced and uncomfortable and out of control. Which sucks. I'm supposed to be the calm one, the laid back one, the one who takes things as they come and makes flexible plans, and instead I feel like one more reschedule could make me shatter. The thought of continuing exactly like this for the next nine months is terrifying. The thought of only doing this for nine more months is heartbreaking. I don't want to think about pre-school and potty training and sleeping in a big girl bed, but I know that I may have to, as soon as next month, next week, or maybe even tomorrow. (Charlotte asked to pee on the potty twice this week, and did both times! Then she peed once on the floor, and today wouldn't sit at all, but that's okay.) Christmas is so exciting and overwhelming at the same time. The present I had my heart set on getting for Charlotte is sold out until January. Charlotte is so excited by the "Chris'm" lights in her room and the santa hat Matt got her that she cried hysterically at bed time. I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, and Charlotte answered, "A Chris'm tree, and go a Yankee Candle." Luckily, I think she'll get both those wishes this weekend.

So that was my week. High points included the two aforementioned spontaneous "I love you"s from my daughter, babysitting (by myself!) the excellent baby G-man (and the excellent puppy-nephew M...the kitty nieces informed me that they did not need or want babysitting, so there), watching Charlotte get very into Christmas songs/lights/decorations, playing Pretend Yankee Candle (auntie's idea) with Charlotte, and making chicken & cheese enchiladas for the first time. Low points were too numerous and horrible to mention.

Tomorrow, though, to mix up some literary heroines, is another day...with no mistakes in it. And boy, am I looking forward to that.

Mama: Charlotte, no! No spitting!

Charlotte: Buh, buh, um, baby....Baby Gavin spitting! Baby Gavin do spitting!

Awesome. Charlotte's first baby cousin related excuse.

Had a great Thanksgiving, went to my Mom's house in upstate NY with Matt & Charlotte, Nicole, her husband & baby, my brother & his wife, my brother's mother-in-law and father-in-law, and my brother's brother-in-law and the brother-in-law's girlfriend. Whew. My mom and stepfather were there too, of course.

Sleeping arrangements were a little complicated - it worked out well the first night, but Charlotte had a major freak out at 1:30 AM and didn't fall down asleep again until almost 4, sleeping between me and Matt on the fold-out couch. Charlotte has never been the kind of kid to come into bed with us and sleep - not since she could sit up/stand up on her own. She's too much of a mover and a shaker. Unfortunately, our only option on Thursday night/Friday morning was to have her in bed with us, and it took her over two hours to fall back asleep...and it wasn't just awake, it was screaming/chatting awake. I was laying there, making sure that she didn't climb off the bed and trash Nana's house, and wishing I could write down some of the stuff that she was talking about. I don't remember it all now, she was using her Elmo and "climb climb climb-a up!" all over Matt, and saying strings of random words.

Despite all the insanity, it was a good time. Mom and I talked a little about how for our family, emotionally, Thanksgiving is almost as good as Christmas when we're all together. It sounds hokey, but it's true. Me and my brother & sister & Mom are really, really close, and we love hanging out. Our spouses are very good at understanding our insanity when we're all together.

Next up...Christmas shopping! Here's what we really want to get Charlotte. Little People A to Z Learning Zoo - pretty much ever since I saw it in a catalog we thought it would be fun for Charlotte. She loves animals, and this has letters, too. Got my fingers crossed that it will still be available when we try and order it. I still have a lot of shopping to do for the step-niece B, who will be 10 month olds at Christmas, and of course, my sister's son who will be almost 5 months at Christmas. I have a few ideas for the kids, I'm pretty psyched. This year is going to be a huge, exciting Christmas...my brother's house renovations will be done soon, and we'll be visiting in January to do Christmas with my mom and sibs.

I have a few more posts coming up...some stuff is percolating in the back of my head, more philosophical mom stuff rather than day by day, blow-by-blow stuff. We shall see.