That Mom

Have you seen that mom at the grocery store where the kids are crying and that mom is just pushing her cart still doing her thing totally ignoring her children?  I’m not proud to say it, but I was that mom yesterday!!

I haven’t been real grocery shopping in over a month.  Sunday night I sat down and picked out 10 meals and made a list.  Yesterday afternoon after Mally had all her naps and a snack, her and I head to the store.  It starts out all fun and giddy.  She stares down people who walk by and smiles at the ones who look back.  She is chewing on my car keys and showing them to me over and over.  A couple isles in I think… man my key fob is soaked I hope baby drool doesn’t break it.  I then take them away because I fear that she will ruin them.  Her world has been crushed – she starts crying!  I try to distract her, but she is trying to turn around in the cart and reach back to the diaper and grab the keys.  I pick up a box of mac ‘n cheese and show her that if she shakes it it will make noise.  Content!  She shakes and chews on the mac ‘n cheese for a few more isles… until I look down and see that she has chewed a HOLE in the box and has cardboard dust all over face!!! 

I’m only half way into my shopping and break down and bust out the snacks.  I try to hold off as long as I can for fear of running out too soon.  I take away the box and give her a graham cracker. 

Once the graham crackers are gone she starts turning around in the cart and grabbing the groceries.  She grabs a bag of chips and starts banging.  Pretty soon she throws them out.  Now I have moved everything out of her reach and she is trying to grab a frozen pizza, but she can’t get a good grip on it and is starting to get mad.  I keep moving her hand off the pizza and telling her no.  After about 189 times she finally got really mad and my telling her no and she starting crying.  To which I was like, YES!  I WIN!  and keep pushing my cart with  a wailing child in it.  I even had a little old grandma walk by and she turned to stare at my red faced, running nose, crying child.  Except… I wanted out of this grocery store and I was on a mission to get this done – so I keep on doing my thing totally ignoring her. 

Then we get to the checkout.  Checkouts are a parents worse nightmare!  They are tight isles!  They have lots of colors and fun things to look at!  I have to strategically place my cart so that I can unload it – yet Mally is out of reach of all things colorful and fun.

My checkout guy is kind of slow and Mally is on the verge of loosing it even more.  I’m talking to Mally trying to distract her from the waiting and waiting.  The checkout guy says… are you trying to teach her?  I looked at him and said, yes I’m trying to teach her to be patient!  (Now hurry it up because she gets her patience from her mother!)

Finally we get back to the safety of our truck and I plop her in her seat and she is quiet as a mouse and just sits there and watches me get drenched in the rain while I unload the groceries.

Now I know why Moms shop alone in the wee hours of the night while their babies are at home safe in bed!!

Slumber Party!

Guess who came over for Mallory’s first slumber party!?! 

Cousin Ellyn!!!

These two are trouble!!

We made a little nest on Mallory’s floor for Ellyn to sleep.  

In the morning around 7:30 Mallory is crying.  I go in there to find Mallory standing up in her crib crying and Ellyn missing.  I had a moment of panic that I lost Ellyn.  I feared that she sleep walked right out of my house and I never heard her.  Then I became rational again and checked the bathroom and she was in there. 

When Ellyn came back into Mallory’s room she tells me that they have been playing in there and that Mallory was just crying because she left to go to the bathroom.  I never heard them playing.  Ellyn even said that Mallory was giggling pretty loud.  Makes my heart melt thinking of them two waking up and playing.  Too cute!

During Mally’s morning nap El and I went outside.  We started out weeding the garden but that got boring for her.  Then she wanted to play hopscotch. 

She even got Jesse to play once!  : )

Ellyn didn’t even want to go home on Saturday morning.  She kept asking us if we knew where her babysitter lived and if we could just take her there on Monday morning.  Oh silly girl!  We will have to have more slumber parties for these girls!  They both loved it!

12 Months!

My last monthly update… or maybe not.  : )  I can’t decide if I want my updates to be done now that she is one or if I should keep doing them.  I guess I’ll see what the next month brings.  Maybe I could do them quarterly.

~ Toddler!  I get weekly updates from babycenter.com and they always said something like “Your baby at Month 6”  Now they say “Your Toddler”.

~ Giggles!  She giggles more now.  It use to be really hard to get her to giggle and now she seems to do it all the time. 

~ Cheesy Grins!  She has this cheesy little grin she does.  Last night we were eating supper and she went to drop a piece of food overboard and Jesse was telling her “No.  Mally you eat it.”  and she would just grin at him.  Then she would eat it.  Next piece – try to drop it overboard and look at Jesse to see what he was going to do.  He would tell her no again and she flashes that cheesy grin.  This time he couldn’t hold off the giggles – he put his head down and started laughing.  Which caused me to laugh.  Which caused Mally to laugh. 

   ~ Naughty!  She is not allowed to stand up at the bookshelf and pull the big books off.  She just can’t resist the big books with all the pages.  And I know when she is up there because she yells.  It is as if she wants me to know she is being naughty.  One day I squat down to her eye level (because that is what super nanny says to do) and I tell her, “No, you sit on your butt.”  And she starts poking at my face going “gonga gonga gonga!”  OMG!!  I couldn’t hold in the laughter.  I put my head down so she couldn’t see me and I silently giggled.  Pretty soon she is full on giggling!!!  How does she even know I am giggling!  Naughty girl!

~ She understands so much of what we tell her.  When she is standing at the baby gate and I need to get in – I tell her to sit on her butt and she plops right down.  One afternoon I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer so I told Mally that Mommy needs a 5 second nap and to go get me her blanket.  She went and got her blanket and gave it to me.  Then I told her that Mommy need her giraffe to sleep with.  She surveyed the room for the giraffe, spotted it, and off she went to get it and bring it back to me.  I also made her go get her bunny… which she did and brought it back. 

~ Her Memory!  One afternoon I was playing with her little bunny and singing “Little Bunny Fu Fu”.  The next afternoon I was in the kitchen doing dishes and she was starting to get fussy and climb up my legs so I started signing songs with her.  I started signing Little Bunny Fu Fu and all of sudden she took off for the living room and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing.  Pretty soon she brings me that little bunny I was playing with the day before.  I was shocked!

~ Talking!  She doesn’t say a whole lot of anything that is too understandable.  She says, Momma and Dada and I haven’t figured out if she is using them correctly yet.  She was saying “uppy” for puppy, but now she says “woof woof” when she sees the puppy.  If you ask her what a puppy says she will do her little “woof woof”.  I almost think she said “eese” (cheese) when I held up the block of cheese yesterday.

~ She claps!  I had been trying to get her to clap for so long and she would just hold onto my hands and clap them together.  One day while she was in her high chair she started clapping and hasn’t stopped since. 

~ Eating!  She is on 100% table food.  She eats just about anything and everything you give her.  If she doesn’t like it – she spits it out.  Her favorite is toast.  If I am going to give her applesauce and toast for breakfast she will refuse the applesauce until her toast is gone.  Although, if I tell her she has to take one bite – she will immediately open up her mouth and take her one bite.

~ 75th Percentile!  She had her one year appointment yesterday and she is weighing in at 22 pounds and 30 inches long.  They also gave her FOUR shots and then had to poke her finger and take blood.  Oh she was not happy!  It breaks my heart seeing her get these shots.  When they pricked her finger they put a bright pink band aid on it and she just sat there crying and wiggling her finger with that band aid on it.  I got her all calmed down and went to the truck and when I put her in the carseat and she saw that bright pink band aid she started crying all over again.

~ Teeth!  She currently has 3 teeth, one on top and two on the bottom.  She is also working on 3 more right now.  Between the teeth coming and the mean nurses giving her shots… poor little sweetie pie!

~ Climbing!  She climbs up the stairs all by herself.  She has also now figured out how to lift her legs up when we are walking up stairs.  Before she would just stand there and you would have to pick her up, but now she can “walk up them”. 

~ Walking!  She loves to walk – but isn’t anywhere close to being ready to do it on her own.  She holds onto both hands to walk or she pushes her toys around to walk.  I’ve tried to make her walk only holding one hand and she doesn’t like it.  She will only take a few steps and then refuses to move and whines.   

~ Sleeping!  She is my fantastic little sleeper.  She is still taking two naps a day.  (I’m not ready for one nap a day – I work during naps and most of the time I am trying to get both my jobs squeezed into those two naps.  So when she goes down to one nap I’m really going to have work even faster then I already do!)  She goes to bed about 7:30 and wakes up around 7:30.  I love it!!  Hopefully all our children will sleep this well – makes me a bit nervous to have anymore.

See that little giraffe laying on the ground – she loves it!  She takes it every where.  It is funny to us that she has taken a liking to this hard plastic giraffe. 

Thanks for enjoying these monthly updates and watching our sweet baby girl grow into a giggly toddler!  : )