Happy New Year!
I just finished vacuuming the condo and mopping our bedroom floor (nothing like a bunch of dog drool and pet dander!) and am still despairing at how messy the place is, so I thought I’d take a break and do a quick update on Colleen. Tom took her Kindermusik today and then off to his Mom’s for a few hours. I’ll meet them later at Grandpa Joe and Grandma Judy’s for dinner with my parents as well.
Colleen officially has 2 molars! Last Sunday (January 4), Tom came from church with her and said, “Your daughter has a molar!” I couldn’t believe it. This whole time, I’ve been putting orajel on her bottom gums because I thought I felt something there and all of sudden the molar pops out on her UPPER left side. Oops! Though a couple days later, the lower left molar popped through as well. She is biting absolutely everything and just can’t keep things out of her mouth–crayons, playdoh, blocks (it’s like she’s a baby again!) So, it’s been a lot of sleepless nights again and she now has a cold on top of it. Ah well. The life of a toddler…
On New Year’s Eve, we went to a party at Cornelia’s house (she is a work colleague of Tom’s). It was kid-friendly from 6-9pm. Colleen had her first juice box (apple juice) and learned how to suck from a straw. Now she is doing it like a pro! We all had a good time and Colleen loved sliding on her stomach across the hardwood floor and having Tom pull her around. It looked like she was breakdancing. :-)
The weekend before New Year’s Nana Mary and Great-Aunt Nancy were here. While Colleen did her usual cling-to-Mommy routine, she did start playing with them and when I would go away for awhile, it seems she played quite well with them. Most of the time she has been getting much better, especially if I leave for awhile once she gets comfortable and my parents’ place is a pretty comfortable place for her since we go there so much. We all had a good time.
Colleen stacked blocks 9 high! I had never ever seen Colleen stack anything. She was really good at knocking blocks over, but I had never seen her try to build anything or stack anything herself. Nana, Aunt Nancy, Grandma Colly and I were sitting in my parents’ living room with the blocks out and all of sudden Aunt Nancy commented on how good Colleen was stacking! I couldn’t believe it. Luckily, I think Nana caught the moment with her camera. Since then she has done quite a bit of building and stacking and her dexterity is getting much better.
We’ve also been doing a lot of drawing with crayons and creating with Play Doh. Books are still her favorite toys though, especially ones that have flaps you can lift or things you can feel. She got a few pull toys for Christmas which she does occasionally, but they haven’t really caught on yet.
Tom and I are surviving. The condo still isn’t completely the way we want it, but we are very slowly getting there. We need to try to get rid of even more of our stuff so it’s easier to keep things organized and clean. The place gets messy and dirty so easily with 2 adults, 2 dogs and a 17-month old, especially since the whole place is only 750 square feet–not much room for the dirt to spread out! :-) Tom is taking off the week of his birthday and we are going to start working on night weaning Colleen. We’re finally all at the point that we feel we need more sleep and I am reading a great book called the No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers by Elizabeth Pantley which makes a lot of sense and also has made me feel better about the choices we have made. I, of course, hope that this doesn’t mean that she stops nursing during the day because I am more than willing to keep that up.
Right now I am looking out the window and the snow is really coming down. Maybe we can finally build a snowman with Colleen. We never got around to it during the last huge snow even though we had lovely snow covering the ground for weeks before Christmas. I also want to take her for a ride in her sled again since she enjoyed it so much on Christmas Day.
