Splish Spalsh!

How do you turn a whiny, needy, teething baby into the happiest baby in the world?

In our family you put them in the bathtub.


Some of my fondest childhood memories are of bath time or playing in the pool. I was a regular water baby--when I was two and we lived in California, I would strip off all of my clothes every time I saw water, always ready for a swim. I still like water--but only if it's warm. Dubai was great.

I'm sure that Josie spent 50% of her life in the bath tub...or running down to the lakes. Josie was a run-away baby and we lived about a 5 or 10 minute walk from both Sunshine and Emerson lakes. Whenever Josie went missing that was the first place we checked. Lucky for us, her little legs didn't ever get her quite into the lakes before we caught up with her.

We all liked the water and I guess Rachel is just following in her aunts' and uncles' (and mommy's) footsteps.


She spent a good forty minutes playing in the tub, all by herself. All I had to do was make sure she didn't drown, which was a nice break from the song-and-dance routine I've been pulling all day, everyday this past week. Her poor little teeth are just causing her heartache and she is not afraid to share her pain with the world.

One of our current favorite songs goes like this:

If you're teething and you know it throw your head backwards and whine at mom.
If you're teething and you know it throw your head backwards and whine at mom.
If you're teething and you know it and you're not afraid to show it,
If you're teething and you know it throw you head backwards and whine at mom.

Rachel knows all the actions to that song!


More often than not she's sucking on her lower lip just whining away. She cries whenever mommy's not there. She hasn't been sleeping well. She wants to eat all the time. She won't play by herself. Yikes! Can we stop with one tooth? That's all she needs, right? I am not sure I can do this 20 or 30 more times!


Ahh...but tub time was marvelous. We might be doing this more often now. Usually I just shower with her because it uses less time and water, but she absolutely enjoyed herself this afternoon.





I could hardly get her to look up at the camera and whenever I offered to take her out of the tub she would pull a face at me or push my hands away and then look away really fast and start splashing and playing again.

What? I can't hear you...

I don't think so, mom.

Just a few more minutes?

Finally when she was wrinkly as a prune and shaking from the cold, I pulled the plug. She still wouldn't come willingly so I let her sit in the tub until all the water had drained out. Only then did she reach up for me when I offered her my hands. Crazy little baby!

Wrinkly toes

We'll have to try to take her swimming sometime, if that diaper ban has been lifted. I think she'd have a grand time in a pool!

Blue, blue eyes(she totally looks like Piper in some of these pictures, I think)

Cookies are Hard

Not this past Valentine's Day, but perhaps around the Valentine's Day before, I made cookies as a surprise for Andrew. Sugar cookies, I recall, a full recipe of them. Decorating them got to be a little old so I only decorated some of them and left the rest sitting on the cooling rack.

That isn't exactly the most optimal way to take care of left over cookies. In fact, it could be argued that that isn't taking care of them at all.

Be that as it may, that's what I did with my cookies.

Andrew's family came over sometime after Valentine's Day and the cookies were still sitting out on the counter. Now they were more like hard tack but sweet nonetheless, so I was still eating them.

Emily asked if she could have one. Since I was still eating them I didn't think twice before telling her she could. So she had one.

Apparently it was a little dry because she said, "Ew! These cookies are hard!"

Our marriage was so young at this point that brutal honesty wasn't the norm yet. Emily was told that what she said wasn't polite--don't want to offend the new daughter-in-law, after all.

She tried fruitlessly to recover. To this day I'm still teased about hard cookies (brutal honesty is now considered okay, I guess) and Emily about mentioning my cookies were hard without any tact.

I can make good cookies, I promise...if I don't over bake them or leave them uncovered for a few days they really turn out alright!

Well, it's about a week past the "holiday season" and our kitchen counter is still littered with treats, none of which I made. There are a few packages of cookies, some caramels, more candy canes than we will ever possibly be able to use, and a good size pile of chocolate. We also have some crackers and a package of peanut butter cookies in our cupboard. That's a lot of junk food.

Andrew is in the middle of creating a website for the MPLA conference. He's been working on it for a long time doing some pretty complicated things. Currently he's creating a way to accept credit card payments, kind of like PayPal, kind of. The other day he vented at me in a very frustrated tone,

"I hate cookies!! They're so hard!"

Taken aback, it took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts. My first reaction was to defend my baking--it's not always bad. In fact, sometimes it's downright delicious, if I do say so myself. I just happen to have a lot of interesting things happen to me in the kitchen, that's all; and those interesting experiences make for interesting outcomes, baking-wise.

Then I realized that we had delivered all the cookies I had baked and there were none in the house.

So I went to get him some cookies from the cupboard...but that just wouldn't make sense since he just said he hated them.

I couldn't think of what he meant at all, so removing all the truculence from my voice I called out sweetly,

"What cookies, honey?"

"The stupid cookies for this website! I can't get them to work right!"

Oh...those cookies. Well, by all means, hate them--as long as you like my cookies we're on good terms. Love me, love my cookies.

(By the way, he has the cookies working now and he's a much happier boy!)

The One and Only Cheerio

On Saturday we gave Rachel her first Cheerio. She did with it the same thing she did with her first accidental bite of a saltine cracker--started choking immediately. So, her Cheerio experience was rather short-lived...

Until today! It's our MYOLO (Make Your Own/Left Over) day today. Andrew had oriental noodles. I had macaroni and cheese. Rachel had Cheerios. It's kind of amazing--our fridge is full of leftovers but they are all more than a week old and therefore kind of scary. So because we were scared we made our own stuff, except the falafel. We ate that. And the beans.

At first Rachel wasn't quite sure she liked Cheerios, but she didn't choke so we kept feeding them to her. After she was done with the first one she wanted another and another and another.


She still doesn't act like she knows what to do with them yet. Believe it or not, this clip was taken 10 minutes into her Cheerio experience. That look of utter disgust that she puts on her face when I put the Cheerio in her mouth, I think that's actually enjoyment. She sometimes gets her emotions mixed up, as a lot of people do. Fondness is strangely easy to mistake for loathing. And Rachel's peals of laughter have been known to tun into tears on more than one occasion.

This evening's Cheerio encounter came to an abrupt halt when Rachel choked on a Cheerio and showered me with a gooey mess of Cheerio, water, and some other sticky fluid. She still wanted more, but I was done. Yuck! We'll try some more another day.

Che peccato!

Rachel had Sawyer over to play today. Val had to teach a class this morning so we traded babysitting. She's going to watch Rachel while Andrew and I go on a date next week. I don't know if that counts as "conflict of interest" since we didn't use the official babysitting exchange our ward has set up (thanks, Kim!). Oh, well...

Sawyer is always just a step ahead of where Rachel wants to be. She idolizes him. He's crawling now and she really envies that.

She likes to touch him and grab him and squeal at him and attempt to follow him all around while he kept crawling just out of her reach as if to taunt her.

Rachel squealing, "Look at me, Sawyer!"
Rachel giving him her famous "Wow, he totally, like, looked at me!" face

Oddly enough, while she is trying to get him to pay attention to her, he doesn't really like all the attention she's giving him. Nor does he like the attention I give her. And she doesn't really like the attention I give him, either. Perhaps no one should pay attention to anyone. That sounds like it would solve all our problems, doesn't it?

Lucky for me Josie was here today to help dish out some one-on-one attention to both Sawyer and Rachel otherwise we'd have been done for.

They did have a few good moments playing with each other though. Here is where Sawyer traded his chew toy for the lanolin tube Rachel was playing with. He handed her his toy, she threw the lanolin and he picked it up and started playing with it. It's a very popular item, apparently--I don't see the appeal, but that's just me.


And here they are playing blocks together. He's a lot handier with the blocks...throwing, stacking, squeaking. Rachel just grabs and chews.


She's really starting to enjoy playing. Here are some pictures of her yesterday, halfway underneath the couch, playing quite rigorously with her blocks. It's nice that she will entertain herself for a few minutes every now and then.


She's so cute. Anyway, back to today.


Rachel and Sawyer were on the floor having a grand old time together. Passing blocks back and forth, throwing them at each other, drooling a lot, babbling...just having a marvelous time.


Now, I'm not sure what happened--whether she lost her balance, was given a non-malicious push by Sawyer, or what--but all of a sudden I heard a sickening *smack* and then that notorious pregnant pause before the screaming starts.

Rachel had tumbled backwards and hit her head on the corner of the TV stand. Apparently she was sitting about one inch too close to it. My bad. I didn't notice when I sat her there but as you can see in the picture, she's obviously perilously close to it (the grey thing right by her head--that's the TV stand).

Just as she started wailing I picked her up. She immediately stopped crying. Mommy's magic.

She had a nice impression of the corner of the TV stand on her head, which I tried to ice with some frozen peas. That was a trick. Every time I put it on her head she would look up to see what it was, so I'd move it back to her battle wound and then she'd move her head so she could see what was on top of it. We were getting no where.

I had to nurse her in order to keep her still enough to ice her head. She, of course, fell asleep and then I was all worried because I didn't check her pupils for proper dilation or to make sure she wasn't lethargic. It was a head injury, after all.

She woke up about a half hour later and was perfectly fine, save it be the nice sized goose egg she has on her head. Poor baby. I'm telling you, once these kids discover movement there's no keeping them safe!

She's still the same happy and energetic baby that she was before, so I'm not too worried about her. Josie and I didn't want her falling over again and hitting the goose egg, though, so we put some pillows behind her while she played. Josie even lent her a toque and sat by her so that she wouldn't topple backwards.

As Rachel was playing with her blocks, she did end up losing her balance, as she always eventually does, and started teetering. Josie rushed over to catch her, but her efforts were futile because instead of falling backwards, Rachel pitched forward and did a perfect face plant, sending her off wailing again. But only for a minute...she wanted to get back down and play again. What I don't get is how she got her legs out from underneath her in order to do the face plant in the first place.


Well, this isn't her first bump and I'm sure it's far from the last so I guess I'll just have to get over it. She just seems too little to be covered in bumps and bruises but I guess that's what happens when you add momentum to life. Pity the day she learns to walk.

Obedience

For Family Home Evening, we taught Rachel about obedience. She talked through half of the lesson, even after being "shushed" so I'm not sure how much of it has sunk in. I guess we'll just have to keep teaching her about it until she gets it.

Anyway, we first read the section about obedience in the Preach My Gospel manual, of course applying it to our own situation:

As a [baby/person], you are expected to keep
the commandments willingly, to obey
[house] rules, and to follow the counsel of
your leaders [and parents]. Obedience is the first law of
heaven. It is an act of faith. You may
sometimes be required to do things you do not
completely understand. As you obey, you
increase in faith, knowledge, wisdom,
testimony, protection, and freedom. Strive to
be obedient to the Lord, the living prophet,
and your [parents].

We talked about how obedience is how we show Heavenly Father that we love him. It's also a good way we can show our parents that we love them. Often we are asked to do things and we don't understand why...but if we just do them, we'll be blessed. As parents, we know more than Rachel. As our Heavenly Father, he knows more than us. It's often best to follow counsel from those who know more than you.

Sometimes, though, the world or Satan try to tell us to do things. We need to learn how to recognize if something is good or bad and make good choices. If someone tells you to do something bad, you don't have to do it. Mostly because there is usually a commandment from the Lord that supercedes whatever wrong thing you were told to do.

There are lots of ways to know if something comes from the Lord or from Satan. We told Rachel that if it feels good, and you don't lose (or risk losing) the Spirit, then do it!

We also talked about how we get blessings when we are obedient to the Lord's commandments, just the same way that when you are obedient to your parents they give you more privileges (typically).

Man, there's a lot of good stuff in Preach My Gospel. We've been using it for our FHE lessons for a while and it's just full of good (and super easy to prepare) lessons. Most sections are really short so if you're pressed for time (which we definitely were last semester) the lesson goes really quick.

Today was the first day of winter semester and Andrew's schedule is so much nicer than last semester. He was home by six o'clock and we had time to eat dinner together, have a lesson, play a game, and play with Rachel! Last semester's Monday nights were not so great. He didn't ever get home until 7:30, or later, and then had so much homework that we always rushed through dinner and a lesson (often we had the lesson while rushing through dinner) so that he could get straight to work.

We actually have a little bit of leisure time now. It was a nice relaxing evening. And Rachel went straight to bed, just like we told her to. Perhaps our lesson did do some good after all.

Awkward Octopus

I put Rachel in the front carrier today in order to attempt to get some work done. Lately she seems only to be happy if she's in my arms or has my one-on-one, undivided attention. This isn't very helpful when I have a house to clean since I can't stand to hear her scream.

So even though she's rather heavy I decided to strap her on, facing outwards to limit the amount of drool I inevitably will collect on my shirt throughout the day.

This is convenient because she is entertained while I am working. This is not-so convenient because she is entertained by my working.

I feel like a clumsy two-headed octopus of sorts. Half of my limbs I can control, the other half fly out sporadically like I have a motor tic of some kind.

While my own legs are carrying me around the house as I do my business, there is another pair swinging and kicking to some internal, and very unique, rhythm of Rachel's, throwing me off balance and occasionally knocking things off of counter tops.

My arms are busy folding clothes, sweeping floors, and scrubbing mirrors while Rachel's are either pinching me or grabbing things that ought not to be grabbed.

It's a quandary. What am I supposed to do?

If I put her on the floor she'll fuss. If I carry her around she'll knock things over. If I put her down for a nap I only have a half hour before she's up and at it again.

Soon she'll be even more of a handful, I'm sure. I remember always wanting to help my mom with the laundry. She'd always give me piles to put away. If she was done folding I'd get to put away Dad's shirts and deliver clothes to all my brothers and sisters. If she wasn't done folding yet she'd give me one kitchen cloth.

"Here, Nancy," she'd say, "You can put this away."

I'd scamper off to the kitchen and put the cloth away and then run back to the living room.

"Here, Nancy, " she'd hand me a towel, "You can put this away."

Again, I'd be off to the kitchen and back again in a flash only to be handed either a cloth or a towel. This would continue until all the folding was done.

I'm pretty sure that my mom was just trying to get rid of me so I didn't make a muck of folding the clothes. When I got older and was invited to help fold the clothes I was ecstatic.

Hopefully Rachel will feel the same way in a few years and I can put her to work because, trust me, laundry isn't all that exciting of a task anymore!

Toothward ho!

This morning I forced Rachel to let me see in her mouth. That tooth is still giving her grief but I think it's almost here. I tried to take some pictures of it...and succeeded, a little bit.


Mostly it looks like Rachel got a hold of the camera and did some autophotography. In a way I guess she did because she definitely was controlling where the camera was aimed--her mouth. She even got parts of it in her mouth at times. A lot of bad pictures were taken this morning. I'm just glad it was a digital camera and not a film camera. Of course, had it been a film camera I probably wouldn't have attempted to take a picture of a tooth that hadn't even broken through the gums of a baby who didn't want me to look in her mouth but instead just wanted to eat the camera.

Don't knock my yoga

Andrew was teasing me about doing yoga today. I don't know why he was teasing me because he's the one who looked ridiculous.

Rachel was on the floor rocking on her hands and knees. Being the encouraging father that Andrew is, he got down on his hands and knees and started crawling in circles around her saying,

"Come on, Rachel, this is how it's done!"


He then proceeded to tell me that if I were to crawl around all day tomorrow, Rachel would surely start crawling.

"You could just do everything on your hands and knees," he said, "even yoga!"

Then he started walking on his knees while doing an awkward sequence of arm movements.

"Hey," I said, "I don't think you should make fun of yoga until you try it."

Mostly I think that because it kicked my trash the first time I tried it. Haven't made fun of it since.

"Why don't you do PM yoga with me?"

Andrew got me an AM/PM yoga DVD for Christmas. The AM routine is pretty straight forward but the PM routine is rather difficult. Andrew looked at me with mock terror in his eyes,

"My bodymind is screaming, 'No, not PM yoga!'"

At least he recognizes that it's hard.

Anyway, I'd better go. He just crashed into the baby gym/couch/wall screaming, "Ahhh! These legs don't have breaks on them!" I think he might actually be in pain.

Please, Mum, I want some more!

To keep Rachel occupied during our supper we often give her food-related items to keep her entertained, such as a sippy cup or a fresh food feeder. She trusts that something yummy will come out of these things. The sippy cup is bound to have water inside, her personal favorite (I've never seen anyone get so excited about water) and the feeder will usually have apples or peas or carrots or some other healthy treat. She loves to try to feed herself, however, she rarely can get these tools in her mouth the right way. She sucks on the bottom of the cup, the handle of her feeder, the wrong end of the spoon...but she is persistent and with a little help she's able to get enough food-taste in her mouth to keep her happy while we eat.

Sometimes we even feed her during our mealtime, but Rachel is quite demanding so this proves rather difficult. She loves eating and so constantly asks for more, giving us very little time to feed ourselves. For example, my family babysat Rachel while we went to the temple this morning. My mom had to mix her up three bowls of cereal to satisfy her. If we do choose to feed her while we're eating we usually do a tag-team approach so that we have hope of getting a little bit of food in our own tummies.

This evening I wasn't feeding Rachel fast enough for her taste. I had given her some frozen peas in her feeder, which she enjoyed smashing on her sore gums, and was digging them out to smash them some more before feeding them to her. She kept whining to me so I started taking a pea at a time and smashing it and then giving it to her.

Once she was full (or entertained) enough to have a little patience with me, she started singing in between each pea-smashing session.

"Ah, muh, ah, muh, ah, nuh, muh, nuh, muh..." she'd go.

I think that translate as, "Come on, get in my mouth, peas, peas! Come on, get in my mouth!"

You can see her gearing up to say her ems and ens in this picture. Pictures 2 and 4 are "m" and picture 7 is an "n." The others are just some pictures that I took because I just can't get enough of my own baby...


She's also starting to open her mouth for the spoon. I was teasing her at dinner, airplaning the spoon toward her mouth with nothing on it. She didn't really appreciate that she didn't get a consistent reward for opening her mouth and eventually grabbed the spoon and chastised me with a high pitched wail.

So I gave her a pea. She's spoiled.

First walk of the year

We just de-Christmasified our house, which is just as much of an art as putting up all the decorations in the first place. By the time we take them down again we can't remember what went in what box and end up shoving things helter skelter until we can close the lids on our boxes. It's kind of like a puzzle.

Somehow we added a box of Christmas stuff this year...it could be the Christmas Village sets that Sister Kitchen gave to us. Those take up a whole lot of room. No matter how we packed the boxes we couldn't get them to fit in the three designated Christmas boxes, so now we have four. Plus our tree. That's what we get for getting married in December, I suppose. Half our gifts were Christmas decorations.

When we had gotten all the lights back into their original packages, a feat in itself, and checked our house over to make sure we didn't miss anything, Andrew took the boxes outside to put them back in our shed.

Our poor little storage shed is full to bursting. How we got that much stuff I will never know. I guess the storage shed is more like an outdoor closet and half the space is taken up by our many suitcases, but still...we have a lot of stuff.

Andrew used his tetris skills to work the Christmas boxes back in there. When he came back inside he remarked,

"It's eerily warm outside."

The high today was 47 F. We took the opportunity to enjoy the warm(ish), melty weather and go for our first walk of 2008 wearing nothing but light jackets (and our clothes, of course).

It was so nice and warm--the day could only have been improved a) the sun been out and b) we knew the warm weather would last, which we're quite certain it won't since it's only the 4th of January.

Rachel had a great time though! She loves going outside.


She's getting to be such a grabby baby. The first thing she did when I put her in the stroller was to grab onto the tray with both hands. By the time I got out the camera she was down to one hand.


She explored snow with Daddy. We took it away when she decided it would make a good snack.

What do we have here?
Can I touch it, really?
It's cold...
There's snow on my face!

She loves when Daddy does crazy things with her in the stroller. He runs around and steers crookedly and tips her backwards.

Wheee!

It looks like this is the last of the warm weather for a while so I'm glad we got out to enjoy it.