Fact

If you allow your baby to eat her sister's Oreo cookies with a generous helping of sand mixed in, her diaper the next morning will be filled with poop that is BLACK. Oreo cookie black. No lie.

Amelia is willing to share her cookie with you if you'd like to try this little experiment at home. Sand thrown in free of charge.

Bested by a baby

Point! Love! Match! Set! or is it Love! Match! Set! Game! Whatever. Tennis is a boring sport anyhow. The point being, the baby has won this round. We started off the "getting Amelia to sleep all night in her crib" experiment with her only getting up a few times during the night and not struggling too much in getting put back to sleep in her crib. Instead of getting better and easier each night, she got worse and worse until on Saturday night she (and we) slept for about 4 hours. And not all at once.

The hardcore sleep deprivation experiment resulted in Andre nearly dragging me to my death in the minivan as he "got confused" when we were loading the car after dim sum and started to drive off while I was half in the back door buckling Amelia in. Then he nearly rear-ended a whole line of cars when we tried to get on the freeway. I didn't come close to accidently killing anyone, but I was extremely testy and snapped at everyone who got close to me.

So, last night, when Amelia woke up for the second time at 11:30, I blearily threw in the towel at the whole damn project and brought her into bed with me. She snuggled in, nursed a while, then went easily to sleep. I'm not going to lie, it still wasn't a fabulous night's sleep, but at least I got about six or seven hours of sleeping in. She didn't wake up to play Professional Wrestling until almost 6:45.

I don't really know how to proceed after this. I guess I'll try getting her back to sleep in her crib after her usual 11:30 pm wakeup and then when/if she wakes up after that, bring her into bed. I don't want to risk any more lives doing it the other way.

Co-Notsleeping

Not really by concious choice, I became an "attachment parent" when Fiona was born. Our parenting choices were pretty much based on these criteria: What will make her scream the least? And do we have to wash a lot of bottles? We became co-sleepers because it was the only way we got any rest. In the crib? Hollering all night long. In our bed? All snuggled up and would sleep as long as we did.

Amelia started off a good co-sleeper. Now however, she is not. Most definitely absolutely positively completely NOT a good co-sleeper. For the past couple of months, she has been waking up for an hour or so at night and wanting to play. In bed. At three in the morning. So our nights go something like this.

Rustle, rustle, rustle. Amelia is standing up in the middle of the bed checking to see who will break first and actually look at her.
Andre groans.
Amelia shrieks a joyful "Haaaaah!" and performs a professional wrestling move to his face. Andre shrieks in pain.
I try making her lay down and nurse and she does, for a minute or two. Then starts crawling around the bed, laughing maniacally.
Andre tries holding her down and shushing her which serves only to piss her off and make her scream loudly in my ear.
Andre gives up and I take another turn trying to get her resettled. She nurses a little and latches on, latches off, latches on, latches off, bites, laughs, shakes head no, waves all done, blows raspberries, until I get irritated and let her crawl around again for awhile. Hoping somehow she'll just get so tired of crawling that she'll just fall back to sleep instantaneously.
Hours pass.
The neighbor's sprinklers come on.
Amelia stares at the blue light from the clock in fascination. Waves hello at the pretty light. Says,"Haaaaaaaaah!" loudly to her new friend the blue light.
Amelia tries laying her head down on my pillow, then Andre's pillow. Then my stomach, then Andre's chest. Then in the middle of the bed, then at the foot of the bed.
Dawn.
Amelia falls back asleep.
Time to get up!

Time to try something new. I'm not getting any sleep anyway, so I guess it's time to try getting her to stay in her crib all night. I'll just have to bite the bullet and do a little night work in her room until she's a nightime crib sleeper. She's usually there until midnight anyway, so six or seven more hours should be easy-peasy, right? Right? RIGHT?!

Twelve Month Amelia

I can't believe it's been a year already. People say things like that all the time, but I really mean it. It feels like it was just a couple of weeks ago that we brought that little wiggle-worm home. It can't possibly have been a whole year.

On to the stats:

Height - 70th percentile
Weight - 20th percentile (Eat child, eat!)
Smarts - Gajillionth percentile (Not biased, I assure you)
Teeth - Seven
Words - Not really sure on this one. Sometimes I'm positive she's saying the right word, like she'll say "Dadadada!" when she sees Andre and I think, "Oh great! She's finally saying Daddy!" and then she'll wander off and start saying "Dadadadada!" as she looks for small toys to eat. She definitely understands commands and even obeys them occasionally. So basically the language skills of a small dog maybe.
Highest fever achieved - 104.9. And just under the wire too, this was on Sunday night.
Physical abilities: Walks, runs, climbs up stairs, climbs onto furniture, climbs into bathtub, tries to climb up the front of people when wants to get picked up, dances, does a wierd duck walk at times that looks like it uses plenty of thigh muscle abilites, prefers running around to cuddling.
Favorite food: Anything on the floor.
Favorite animal: Both of the cats, but mostly Ellis because he lets her touch him once in a while.
Favorite toy: Whatever Fiona is playing with.
Favorite activity: Throwing all her food off her high chair and then hunting down any stray leftovers to eat off the floor later.
Future aspirations: Her current skill set indicates that she would be good at either street sweeping or working as a mime specializing in duck imitations.

Happy birthday Amelia, I love you. You great big toddler, you.


 

Quarantine

Andre's brother and sister in law are visiting with their two kids. Quite literally the second they came through the door, Amelia came down with a fever. I'm not exaggerating here. They walked in the door around midnight Friday night, we got them squared away in bed, Amelia started crying and had a temperature of 102. This is the first time she's ever run a fever and of course it had to be when we have guests.

Yesterday one of the nieces started to feel crummy. I was impressed that she could have caught Amelia's illness in a mere 24 hours, but no! It's something completely different! She most likely has hand, foot, and mouth disease. It's generally not a huge deal, but it's really contagious. So in 3 to 7 days, the rest of the kids should have it too, perhaps with a side of whatever Amelia has.

I'd try to stay as far away from this house as possible if I were you.

Nothing cuter

Amelia is determined to figure out a way to pick up light. She has some fancy new sandals that light up and she keeps trying to catch the glow in her fingers and pick it up. Probably to eat, but she hasn't gotten it close enough to her mouth yet to tell. I'll let you know if she's ever successful.